Bring Her Back

Mr. Pat

2 hours ago

4 min read

After Stanford deliberately tried, and succeeded, in injuring Jeremiyah Love with their constant cheap shots last year, it was nice to see Notre Dame beat the brakes off the trees. After Texas lost to Oklahoma, of all teams, we'll likely see Notre Dame slot into the number two spot ahead of their game against BYU, which will be a matchup of two top ten teams. This pleases me. Anyways, before the Irish took the field, I watched...

Bring Her Back (2025)

Whooo boy, I did not know what I was getting into when I watched this one. I'll get to why in a bit, but until then, let me repeat: Whoooo boy...

So, 17-year-old Andy and his nearly blind sister find their father dead in the shower. He had been battling cancer for an undisclosed amount of time, so his death wasn't totally unexpected. Needless to say, it seems to really affect Andy, who can't bring himself to help their father as he's lying on the floor, ultimately ending in his death.

The two kids, Andy and Piper, are very close; Andy is more or less her protector and best friend because, as I mentioned, Piper is nearly blind. After their dad's death, the question becomes: what do they do with the kids? While meeting at a police station, they learn that they have found a home for Piper, and after some pleading from both of them, the soon-to-be foster mother agrees to take them both in.

Their new guardian was a former counselor, and despite her outward friendliness, there's something off about her from the moment you meet her. On the outside, she puts on a friendly and welcoming face, but you can't help but feel uncomfortable that something is lurking underneath. Inside the home is also a boy named Ollie. He doesn't talk, just kind of stares and wanders around. While you feel unease about Laura, the movie is overt in letting you know that something is very wrong with Ollie.

As time passes, things start escalating, slowly at first, until everything starts spiraling out of control in a hurry and the movie turns crazy. Eventually you learn that the foster mother, Laura, had lost her daughter and she never got over it. In her grief, she turns to something she doesn't understand, and certainly can't control forever.

I'm not going to give a beat-by-beat summary of the plot because this is a movie where you should go in fresh and get lost in the insanity. One thing I will say: this movie felt very similar to Hereditary. In case you didn't know, I ruffled a few feathers when I gave that movie a fairly low review. What I always tell people is that Hereditary is a phenomenal movie about grief slowly tearing a family apart, and Toni Collette was absolutely robbed come award season. To not even get an Oscar nomination for that is criminal. Where Hereditary failed for me was the horror aspect of the horror movie. Scary is subjective, but I didn't find anything horrific in the movie. Even with the baddies winning, the movie didn't bother to let us know what that meant for the world they lived in, except that, theoretically, the cult was going to get money. Plus, the scariest part to me when watching was the mother pounding on the door with her head, but that scene was ruined for me when someone described it as, "Banging her head against the door like a woodpecker." Now I can't unsee it.

Anyways, this movie was genuinely disturbing. Instead of old women standing outside schools yelling, "I cast you out!" the scenes in this were very difficult to watch. When Ollie loses it for the first time, there are a bunch of holy shit moments that are not for the squeamish. There's a scene with a knife and a melon that is probably going to live rent-free in my head for a long time. Plus, his choice of snack when he's losing it is VERY hard to watch.

I liked the movie, but there's no way I'd ever watch it again. The acting is good, and all the characters have their own ways of standing out. Piper is a sweet girl trying to get along in a world that isn't made for, or accepting of blind people. Andy is the older brother trying to keep her safe and protect her, keeping a brave face despite the mountains of trauma underneath that he can't talk about. Even Laura is sympathetic in her own way. As a parent, her motivation is something I can understand, but she's just so focused on her goal that she doesn't care how many lives she ruins in order to get it.

Not only that, she's a very effective villain. She's not strong, not overly devious, but what she is is smart. She worked with the police for many years as a counselor and now fosters kids, so she understands them and how to manipulate people. The way she gaslights Piper, and especially Andy, is wonderfully infuriating. She has to break Andy down because she's a woman who appears to be in her 50s and is tiny, while Andy is a fit teenager. They have a scene showing just how much stronger he is than her, so she needs to use her intelligence and experience to chip away at his sanity. You hate her as she's doing these things, but it makes her all the more compelling. She wasn't always a monster, but ended up becoming one. Still, as a parent, I understand why she's doing these things.

There were two endings to this movie. I don't want to get into what they were, but I am so glad they went with the one they did. It just fit the story they were telling so much better. I'm not going to delve deeper, but the original ending would have been frustrating.

It's a good movie, but it's difficult to watch. I don't regret watching it, but like I said, I'll never watch it again.