With October just around the corner, there is no better time to dust off your trusted list of horror movies. Whether your thing is traditional slashers, possession flicks, creature features, or gothic horror, there’s one movie coming to HBO Max early next month you definitely don’t want to miss.
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Centered around grief-stricken siblings, Andy and Piper, Bring Her Back is another A24 phenom, and it’s nothing short of terrifying. Directors Danny and Michael Phillipou pull no punches, delivering a true horror film that is heavy on the trauma and genuine fear these kids feel throughout the story, with one reviewer claiming that it’s not simply horror, “but an experience you’ll feel in your bones.” Critics also loved this movie, with the New York Times saying, “I’m beginning to think that the Philippous don’t just want to shatter our nerves: They want to break our hearts.”
What Makes Bring Her Back So Terrifying?
In true A24 fashion, Bring Her Back is a film that gives us a slow descent into the true horror at the heart of it, building up the sense of dread as it progresses. It’s a marathon, not a sprint, and it keeps your eyes glued to the screen the entire time with out-of-this-world performances from Sally Hawkins, Billy Barratt, and Jonah Wren Phillips and twists you would never see coming.
The film starts with 17-year-old Andy discovering his father’s body after he has passed away in the shower. Andy, who is only three months shy of his 18th birthday, and his younger stepsister, Piper, are placed in the care of Laura (Sally Hawkins), a former therapist with another foster child named Oliver and untold eccentricities of her own. The eerie tension and sense of dread picks up almost immediately, with Laura and Oliver growing more and more strange as the run time goes on. One of the more notable scenes that highlights just how wrong things are at Laura’s home shows Andy attempting to bond with Oliver, who is mute. Andy makes a snack of sliced apples for himself and the boy, but Oliver shuns the fruit in favor of the knife itself. But Bring Her Back doesn’t just rely on the shock value of these scenes, most of which were brought to life with practical effects. The horror at the center of the film is something we never saw coming, and for a contemporary movie to truly deliver on a genuinely shocking ending is no small feat. Bring Her Back turns its focus not only toward otherworldly terror, but on grief, generational trauma, and family—and how profoundly those things can affect us.
Will you be adding Bring Her Back to your Halloween movie list? Let us know in the comments. And don’t forget to check out the ComicBook Forum to tell us more about your favorite horror films.
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