Bring Her Back

It’s tempting to accuse Bring Her Back and its directors, Danny and Michael Philippou—the Australian twin-brother duo behind 2023’s Talk to Me—of falling into the trap affecting so much of modern horror. Every other horror filmmaker has tried to dramatically elevate their movie with themes of loss and trauma, adding formulaic emotional weight to their premise through some manner of profoundly emotional messaging. I’ve complained about the trend before, particularly involving cases of blatant literalism, such as last year’s The Substance, where its otherwise resonant message proves so surface-level that there’s nothing to mine afterward. Few choices are more banal than horror movie characters who engage in open dialogue about “trauma” and other such buzzwords; when a movie states its themes in such overt terms, it’s condescending to the viewer. It doesn’t trust that audiences are smart enough to interpret a movie or figure out what a work of art means. And there’s a little of that in Bring Her Back, but not enough to render this nasty, squirm-inducing, emotionally raw experience ineffective. When a movie is this well done, its clichés evaporate. 

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