Bring Her Back Budget, Box Office Collection, Cast, Review, Plot, Hit or Flop, OTT Release Date
“Bring Her Back” (2025) will rip your stomach, rip your heart out, and drag you through emotional hell – sometimes all at once. But somehow, in its final moments, it touches such a tender nerve that you can cry for a character you once wanted to fail. In the end, Laura is reunited with her daughter not peacefully but in a brutal moment of spiritual grace. It’s powerfully emotional but far from comforting. Their reunion feels brutal, like the film itself, showing how suffocating and terrifying grief can be.
That’s what Danny Filippo and Michael Filippo – the twisted Australian filmmaker duo behind 2022’s Talk to Me – bring to their second feature. Produced by A24, their follow-up delves deep into the raw, painful realm of grief. But instead of relief, it traps its characters in a constant cycle of suffering, where their urgency to escape adds weight to both the violence and the heartbreak. In this heartbreaking mix of physical horror and the supernatural, we follow a mother longing to be reunited with her dead child and a teenager who wants to erase the memory of her lost father. Their emotional struggles emerge in a painful portrayal of psychological breakdown.
Yet, as they fight for custody of Piper, the ghosts of their own trauma won’t let you go. This film doesn’t drag you into this nightmare to scare you, but rather to thrust you into the minds of two people you want to avoid not just because of the blood, but because of the ugly truths they carry. Here’s where the film really bites. Let’s see how that tension plays out throughout its narrative.
Brief Overview About Bring Her Back
| Category | Details |
|---|---|
| Directed by | Danny Philippou, Michael Philippou |
| Written by | Danny Philippou, Bill Hinzman |
| Produced by | Samantha Jennings, Kristina Ceyton |
| Starring | Billy Barratt, Sora Wong, Jonah Wren Phillips, Sally-Anne Upton, Stephen Phillips, Mischa Heywood, Sally Hawkins |
| Cinematography | Aaron McLisky |
| Edited by | Geoff Lamb |
| Music by | Cornel Wilczek |
| Production Companies | Causeway Films, Salmira Productions, South Australian Film Corporation, Blue Bear |
| Distributed by | Stage 6 Films (Australia), A24 (United States) |
| Release Dates | 29 May 2025 (Australia), 30 May 2025 (United States) |
| Running Time | 104 minutes |
| Countries | Australia, United States |
| Language | English |
Take a Look Bring Her Back Movie Cast & Crew
| Actor/Actress | Character Name | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Billy Barratt | Andy | A guilt-ridden and traumatized 17-year-old boy |
| Sora Wong | Piper | Andy’s visually impaired younger step-sister |
| Sally Hawkins | Laura | A grieving mother |
| Jonah Wren Phillips | Oliver / Connor Bird | Laura’s foster son |
| Sally-Anne Upton | Wendy | Andy and Piper’s social worker |
| Stephen Phillips | Phil | Andy and Piper’s deceased father |
| Mischa Heywood | Cathy | Laura’s deceased 12-year-old daughter |
Bring Her Back Box Office Collection
| Region | Gross Earnings |
|---|---|
| United States & Canada | $19 million |
| Other Territories | $4 million |
| Worldwide Total | $23 million |
Opening Weekend (U.S. & Canada)
| Detail | Amount |
|---|---|
| Release Date | July 6, 2025 |
| Theatres | 2,449 |
| Opening Weekend Projection | $5–7 million |
| First Day Earnings | $3.1 million |
| – of which Previews (Thursday) | $850,000 |
| Opening Weekend Gross | $7.1 million |
| Opening Weekend Position | 3rd |
| Competing Release | Karate Kid: Legends |
Bring Her Back Movie Plot
If you watch Australian twin filmmakers Danny and Michael Filippo’s 2023 breakout feature “Talk to Me,” you can naturally draw parallels with their intense follow-up “Bring Her Back.” According to Danny (who co-wrote both films with Bill Hinzman), the two films were written together and emerged from a personal grief – the tragic death of his cousin’s 2-year-old child.
Each story revolves around the characters’ nightmarish attempts to bring someone back from the dead, driven by raw grief, which soon devolves into selfish obsession. As violent as “Talk to Me” was remember the moment a perverted teenager repeatedly cracked his skull and tried to gouge out his own eye – Bring Her Back takes things a step further. The party tricks are complete.
Where “Talk to Me” sets clear supernatural rules (hold the decorated hand, say “talk to me” and finish it in 90 seconds to avoid danger), Bring Her Back blurs the lines – making it even more unsettling. This new film opens up the domestic thriller genre and turns it inside out, also revealing something unfamiliar beneath the surface.
Traditional domestic thrillers like The Good Son or The Hand That Rocks the Cradle depict a family under threat from an outside force, with the mother cast as the strong protector. But in Bring Her Back, the main mother character has already been broken – her daughter has died. Laura (a chilly Sally Hawkins) tries to rebuild her family using the pieces of others: two half-siblings, Andy (Billy Barrett) and Piper (newcomer Sora Wong), whose father recently passed away.
Laura treats Andy and Piper as a unit – Andy, who is almost 18, takes care of her younger sister, who is mostly blind and socially isolated (“I only see light and shapes,” she says). Wong, who is blind herself, brings a shocking depth to her debut. Laura’s late daughter Kathy also lost her sight, which makes Laura a suitable foster parent – until it becomes clear that her home is far from a shelter.
She torments Piper by hiding the truth, playing up her blindness, and mentally tormenting her – once even throwing urine on her while she sleeps so that she thinks she’s wetting the bed. Oliver (Joanna Raine Phillips), who lives with her, is a mute adoptee, whom she treats more like a feral dog than a child. Her calculated cruelty makes Bring Her Back seem like a vomit-filled orphan. Laura may be the most brutal screen mother since Mommy Dearest. No wonder Phillips cites twisted “psycho biddy” films like “What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?” as inspiration.
Positive Elements
Andy cares deeply for his half-sister Piper. He admits that when his father married Piper’s mother, he was initially jealous. His father eventually acted as if he had “found the family he wanted,” Andy notes. But the boy’s attitude quickly changed. And he tells Piper of his loving concern for her.
In fact, he is as loving and caring as a brother. He lives under the dubious care of Laura, mostly for his sister. Piper loves her brother. And when she sees something strange in the foster family, her first concern is for her.
It is also clear that Laura loved her daughter, Kathy. (But the girl’s death deeply broke Laura.)
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Spiritual Elements
Laura has a VHS tape of a recorded ritual; it shows a satanic ritual that transfers the “soul” of the deceased into the body of another person. (More on this in the violent content.) Similarly, he talks to Andy about his belief that our souls live on in our bodies after we die. It is eventually revealed that Oliver and Piper are part of a sinister plan to supernaturally “recreate” Laura’s daughter Kathy.
Laura uses blood and magic circles (such a circle surrounds her entire estate) to supernaturally control the zombified Oliver. And if the boy is pulled outside the circle, he cries and screams in pain.
The funeral takes place in an open casket at the local church. After their father’s death, Andy tries to soothe Piper’s grief by talking about his father’s soul being taken to heaven on a plane. Laura feeds Oliver a piece of Andy’s father’s hair in a supernatural ritual. Andy has a spiritual premonition about Piper’s death.
Bring Her Back Review
In my 15-plus years as a professional film critic, I’ve developed my share of cinematic criticisms, and I especially love bad performances. Not even a bad scene or special effects can quickly derail my investment in a scene in which more than one character over-explains a situation or relationship to another. For one thing, it never fails to register as spoon-feeding and belittling the audience. Second, and more importantly, it always feels lazy: Rather than finding a creative or clever way to convey the necessary information, the filmmakers have chosen to make everything obvious.
It was because of this personal complaint that I quickly came to like Danny and Michael Filippo’s storytelling abilities. One thing I love about Talk to Me, their feature debut, is that the film doesn’t bend over backwards to explain the origins of the ceramic hand that allows a person to summon and possess the dead. They have a strong and significant grip on the “show, don’t tell” philosophy, and that’s why they’re making another must-see horror film in their second-phase effort, “Bring Her Back.”
Last time, the twin filmmakers had a lot of fun combining the horror of possession with the use of illegal party drugs. This time, the material is much scarier, but it’s no less mesmerizing. The film is an examination of extreme grief (which is why it’s not as “fun” as its predecessor), and it’s mesmerizing. Brilliant performances bring the dynamic characters to life, and while you’re compelled by the mysterious danger the heroes find themselves in, the work simultaneously awakens a terrifying curiosity about the evil that is being deliberately kept secret.
