Bring Her Back is now available on streaming, meaning a broader audience can check out one of the best films of 2025. Directed by Danny and Michael Philippou as the follow-up to their critically acclaimed Talk to Me, Bring Her Back is both a powerful rumination on grief and an unsettling story of death and resurrection.
Earning strong reviews from critics and a solid box office return, the A24-produced horror film eschews the typical trappings of the genre for a more understated story. Largely set in a small home in Australia, the film focuses on a grieving foster mother taking in two recently orphaned teenagers — steadily revealing her true plans for them.
Bring Her Back was a fitting follow-up to the critically acclaimed Talk to Me. Bring Her Back is a complex emotional story that trades a more powerful emotional punch for the overt scares. Now that Bring Her Back is on HBO Max, anyone who loves horror movies needs to check out one of the year’s best examples of the genre.
Bring Her Back Is Streaming On HBO Max: Why You Should Watch It
Bring Her Back is now available on HBO Max just in time for Halloween. This makes it a perfect pairing with the previous film by the Philippou Brothers, Talk to Me. Both films use supernatural elements to explore grief, but Bring Her Back introduces a more sinister edge to it with Sally Hawkins’ Laura.
Bring Her Back was a solid success for A24, earning over $39 million at the box office off a budget of $15 million. On top of that, the film earned impressive reviews from critics, with a certified fresh Rotten Tomatoes Tomatoeter score of 89%. Screen Rant’s Mary Kassel called the film a “heavy-hitting” story with a strong focus on character.
Bring Her Back – Key Review Scores
RT Tomatometer
RT Popcornmeter
Metacritic Metascore
Metacritic User Score
IMDB Score
Letterboxd Score
89%
79%
75/100
6.9/10
7.2/10
3.7/10
Largely self-contained and unafraid to leave the specifics of the supernatural to the imagination, Bring Her Back is best when it lets the characters and their emotional states drive the story forward. The film also boasts one of the best performances with Hawkins, who keeps her character from ever becoming too horrific or sympathetic.
2025 has been a strong year for the horror genre, with films like Sinners and Weapons killing it at the box office and with critics. Bring Her Back is right there with those massive hits, an understated and emotionally charged film that finds the perfect balance between shocking moments of violence and the unbearable dread that surrounds it.
Bring Her Back might not have the big jump scares or monsters of other films from this year, but Bring Her Back has an emotional and painfully human core that makes it stand out in a crowded field. Bring Her Back is just as heartbreaking as it is horrifying, and it’s a must-watch this Halloween season.
