‘Bring Her Back’ Review: Sally Hawkins Delivers a Chilling Turn as a Foster Mother From Hell in This Disturbing Horror

Grief rarely arrives in one tidy parcel and in Bring Her Back, directors Danny and Michael Philippou take a slow walk through the dark corridors of it, while also touching on abuse, and supernatural terror. It’s a very different beast from their breakout film Talk to Me, the brothers have delivered something far more disturbing. Tension here doesn’t explode so much as it seeps, creeping in at the corners until the whole frame feels contaminated.

The story centers on two siblings, Andy (Billy Barratt) and Piper (Sora Wong), who are placed into the care of foster mother Laura (Sally Hawkins) following the death of their father. Hawkins delivers a fiercely unnerving performance as Laura, a foster mother with a few too many skeletons in the closet, some metaphorical, some not. Laura, a former childcare worker whose own daughter died under hazy circumstances, offers them shelter. But beneath her floral prints and soft-spoken manner lies a murky depth, and the water gets dark quickly.

Laura, at first, seems well-meaning if a little eccentric, but we’re quickly given access to her behaviors that Andy and Piper can’t see: Laura pocketing hair from a corpse, drawing symbols on the floor, watching grim VHS tapes that look like dispatches from some cursed past. It doesn’t take long before that eccentricity begins to feel like something far more unhinged.

As the atmosphere grows thick with discomfort. Laura’s intense affection for Piper borders on obsession, while Andy is given the bare minimum. Also in the mix is Oliver (Jonah Wren Phillips), another foster child who never utters a word. His presence feels like a walking omen: shaved head, expressionless stare, often seen shirtless and silent, his presence dials the tension up to 11. Keep an eye on him as when Oliver acts, the story jolts into a different realm.

Sally Hawkins is key to the film’s power. Her performance is slippery, never quite readable. One moment she’s endearing and maternal; the next, something in her expression tightens and you find yourself pulling back. As Laura, she embodies desperation wrapped in warmth, a woman who seems more lonely than dangerous, right until the moment she clearly is. Her volatility simmers throughout, and when it erupts, it does so without warning.

Bring Her Back may not be for the squeamish, but horror fans with steel nerves will find a lot to admire, and plenty to recoil from.

Visually, the film leans hard into its mood. Mirrors fog, water overflows, everything is hazy, unclear, unstable. The motif of vision is explored literally and metaphorically, with Piper’s partial blindness echoed in the film’s unwillingness to show too much too soon. The horror until this point is psychological and spiritual, the kind that builds in layers. It explores how trauma settles in a house, how grief mutates love, and how the past can refuse to stay buried. Then come flashes of visceral horror so extreme, you’ll instinctively look away, images you’ll try to forget but won’t. The violence, when it comes, feels personal and pointed. The Philippous know exactly how long to hold back before they strike.

It’s not all watertight, some may find fault in the film’s occasional vagueness. It refuses to fully explain itself, leaving symbolic threads hanging or barely sketched. But that opacity feels intentional. This isn’t a film of answers. It’s a portrait of emotional damage and supernatural intrusion, overlapping until it’s impossible to tell where one ends and the other begins.

Compared to Talk To Me, Bring Her Back is more restrained but also more devastating. It’s less about shocks and more about slow corrosion. The theme of trauma—especially childhood trauma—hangs heavy. Hawkins is masterful, oscillating between saccharine smiles and unspeakable menace. This is her most haunting role in years. Bring Her Back may not be for the squeamish, but horror fans with steel nerves will find a lot to admire, and plenty to recoil from.

Bring Her Back hits UK cinemas this weekend, July 26, and is available to buy or rent on digital platforms in the US.

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