Bring Her Back proves even great horrors aren't horrifying anymore

Jackson Weaver · CBC News

· Posted: May 30, 2025 4:00 AM EDT | Last Updated: 10 minutes ago

Do movies person the quality to scare america anymore? 

This is not a question of whether they tin disturb us. The aboriginal 2000s evolution to violence-based endurance cinema via Saw, Hostel and The Human Centipede proved we inactive cringe astatine the worst depictions of gore. 

The much caller crook to cultural commentary via fearfulness metaphor — as seen successful The Substance, Sinners and The Invisible Man — proves we are inactive astatine slightest passingly funny successful fearfulness arsenic a vehicle for thing deeper. After all, what's much cutting than to suggest that racism, colonialism and misogyny are the existent boogeymen of contiguous — and that these, dissimilar vampires, are shockingly real? 

But for those films that inactive effort to achieve the genre's archetypal extremity of making us shudder astatine what goes bump successful the night,  possibly their enactment is chopped retired for them. 

That includes Michael and Danny Philippou's caller A24 production, Bring Her Back. The follow-up to their 2022 viral smash Talk To Me, it's a visually beauteous and cinematically stylish outing, though it whitethorn beryllium amended viewed arsenic a blood-drenched play alternatively than axenic horror. Another supernatural thriller à la The Exorcist, its slick excesses are definite to garner captious and assemblage approval, adjacent if 1 tin efficaciously conjecture astatine the wide beats of its possession crippled astir 15 minutes aft its unfortunate stars amble successful together. 

WATCH | Bring Her Back trailer: 

That's because, similar its caller predecessors, Bring Her Back isn't among the meta-fictional outcropping of horrors. Those offerings — similar Ready oregon Not, Cabin successful the Woods oregon Happy Death Day — eschew fearfulness entirely, to alternatively cleverly constituent out, and joyfully subvert, conscionable however formulaic the genre has become. 

Instead, arsenic its selling would suggest, Bring Her Back goes for thing person to horror's progressively elusive archetypal promise. Following unsighted teen Piper (Sora Wong) and step-brother Andy (Billy Barratt) soon aft the decease of their father, the "her" of Bring Her Back's rubric takes a spot of doing to get to. First, we're greeted by manically benignant foster parent Laura (Sally Hawkins), her creepily mute foster lad Oliver (Jonah Wren Phillips) and her profoundly unsettling stuffed dog. 

But arsenic Laura bristles astatine Andy's program to use for guardianship of his sister erstwhile helium turns 18, the foreboding ambiance rapidly ramps up. 

There's thing incorrect with Oliver; his dead-eyed look and attempts to wrestle with their feline can't beryllium right. There's thing disconnected with Andy; his bed-wetting, dead-to-the-world drooling slumber and hallucinations of his dormant begetter suggest arsenic much. 

And astir of all, there's thing worrying with Laura; her thinly disguised obsession with Piper — and adjacent little disguised disapproval of Andy — is intelligibly covering thing much sinister. There is simply a creeping, malevolent wrongness successful that house, bubbling up from conscionable hardly beneath the surface. 

Though, again, each but the astir horror-averse volition apt portion unneurotic what's hiding nether that surface no longer than astir 10 minutes aft the quality archetypes found themselves. There is the guiltless lamb here, the penitent but sin-stained martyr there, and the ill-advised deals with the devil that tin lone ever spell 1 mode for those foolish capable to participate into them. 

That's compounded by an ending that feels similar a measurement backmost from the edge, an at-once predictable yet vaguely disappointing finale that undercuts its ain message. This benignant of failsafe turn, portion thing of a alleviation from the unrelentingly dour ambiance up until then, besides feels similar the Philippous are unable to spot that their assemblage knows what benignant of movie they've agreed to.

But this benignant of ending is not uncommon for mainstream horror, a genre that isn't rather consenting to alienate each but its astir die-hard fans. And it besides isn't capable to ruin what has travel already, predictable arsenic it whitethorn be. It astatine slightest occasionally shocks done the gore, namely through its blood-drenched, toothy crunches — astir much horrifying erstwhile you clasp your hands successful beforehand of your look to beryllium assaulted solely by the sound.

Unsettling cinema

However, wide — done some its atmosphere and the dare-you-to-watch marketing — Bring Her Back means to unsettle. 

It is overwhelmingly the strategy of the modern, "straight-scary" movie. Films that, astatine slightest on their face, beryllium solely to push us to ideate things that marque existent beingness airy successful comparison — that are truthful awfully, bitterly, shockingly unsettling we cheque nether the furniture earlier going to slumber — are vanishingly fewer now. Or much accurately, vanishingly effective. 

That's apt owed to the aforesaid reason that flashing ankles oregon showing joined couples sleeping successful the aforesaid furniture is improbable to titillate oregon provoke nowadays. We are truthful inundated with real-life stories of horrors — and truthful utilized to the once-new mean of cinema that our cognition is evolving with it — that really scaring adults who are looking for fearfulness has go a virtually intolerable dragon to slay.

That doesn't mean conjuring fearfulness is everlastingly retired of filmmakers' reach: There are always the infrequent watchers, inactive spooked easy capable to summation the hype astir caller releases. And the trite leap scare — of which Bring Her Back thankfully is mostly absent — is an casual gimmick to marque astir watchers flinch.

But for the immense swaths of different mainstream consecutive horrors, there's truly lone 1 strategy going forward. Oz Perkins utilized it successful his bait-and-switch transgression play Long Legs, arsenic did Kyle Edward Ball for the ingeniously confusing Skinamarink: It's to openly prevarication successful your ads.

To usage viral selling and societal media to committedness the astir unsettling theatrical acquisition of your life; to guarantee audiences that they'll scarcely beryllium capable to sit done the stunningly suspenseful agony without screaming, passing retired oregon moving for the exit.

Audiences aren't the delicate, ankle-sensitive viewers they erstwhile were. So filmmakers person to alternatively purpose to trigger akin — though inactive chiseled — emotions successful them to astatine slightest unreal to present connected their marketed promise.  Whether shame, disgust, pity oregon conscionable wide discomfort, more and more, existent fearfulness movies opt to enactment arsenic usurpation simulators to elicit the visceral reactions that gully radical in. 

That is overwhelmingly existent of Bring Her Back, a fearfulness touted arsenic eminently scary, but which is much eminently unsettling for however forcefully it makes its audiences beryllium done the assorted violations of societal contracts and basal trust. Piper, our unsighted character, is repeatedly lied to astir her surroundings by those she relies connected to archer the truth. Andy's hulking masculinity is routinely utilized against him, arsenic characters purposely misrepresent his behaviour arsenic convulsive and threatening.

And the astir basal societal declaration — that adults should support children — is truthful consistently and wholly violated it becomes the uncomfortable thesis upon which the full communicative rests. 

It's a ascendant and unrelenting taxable that, portion not triggering fear, makes you squirm nonetheless. It is simply a strange but common thing, then, to accidental that though it is not truly frightening, Bring Her Back is 1 of the champion modern fearfulness movies successful ages.