Creeptober Night 4: Bring Her Back (2025)
The best movie of 2025 is tonight’s Creeptober pick.
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Yesterday we watched one of the best films of 2025. Today we watch the best film of 2025. Bring Her Back has finally hit subscription streaming (on HBO Max), so it’s time for all of us to watch it again.
Reacting to Bring Her Back
Whenever I watch a new horror movie, I always evaluate how it stacks up against other movies I’ve seen. I do this because for the past few years I’ve done a yearly horror ranking (sorry, this year’s needs a major update). But when I watch a movie I really like, I have a habit of rating it higher than I probably should. Call it recency bias if you want, but I’ll usually rank my favorite movies very high, then adjust them a few weeks later when I’ve had more time to think about it. Bring Her Back landed on my number one spot for the year when I saw it in theaters during its May release. It never moved from that position, and watching it again for Creeptober confirms it. Bring Her Back is the best horror movie of 2025 so far. [SPOILERS below.]
What I love about Bring Her Back is that it never relents. It’s uncomfortable from the very first scene, and it just gets progressively more unsettling from there. Often when a movie is upsetting the first time you watch it, the effect lessens on the second viewing since you know what to expect. That’s not the case here. I’ve seen it twice now, and I felt as apprehensive, upset, and unsettled as the first time I saw it. I love that!
What strikes me most about the movie is how it doesn’t really try to hide anything. It doesn’t build up to some huge twist that changes the way we view the movie up to that point. Instead, the movie follows the path that it lays out in front of us, and the horror feels inevitable rather than surprising. To me, that’s an indication that the filmmakers, Danny and Michael Philippou, respect their audience’s intelligence. It also shows confidence in their ability to construct a powerful horror movie without any trickery or overt subversions.
For example, I think most horror fans will recognize right away that Sally Hawkins’ character Laura is up to no good. It’s clear that Oliver is involved in whatever plan she has, and that plan also involves her dead daughter. It’s also clear that Piper is needed for whatever Laura is up to, but Andy is an unexpected problem that she wants to get rid of. All of these things are apparent in the first scene where all of the characters meet. But instead of trying to hide it, the movie forces us to sit with it. And suffer in it.
We watch as Laura manipulates Andy and Piper, and we hope that they’ll figure it out in time to do something. But each step along the way they’re pulled in deeper and deeper and all we can do is watch, knowing that it’s probably going to get worse. It’s a kind of dramatic irony that is excruciating to experience, especially since the bond between Andy and Piper feels so genuine.
Of course there are also the gruesome moments scattered throughout the film. Oliver and the knife. Oliver and his arm. Just, Oliver. But also moments like knowing that Cathy is in the freezer, but Piper can’t see her as she stands right next to her. And the drastic action Laura takes as Wendy and Andy try to get away near the end of the movie. Those scenes all push the horror to greater heights, but I really feel like the more subtle yet continuous hum of anxiety spread throughout the entire film is the most effective form of horror in Bring Her Back.
Before I close out this night of Creeptober, I want to say that I believe Sally Hawkins should be nominated for an Oscar for Bring Her Back. She’s said that she doesn’t want the nod, but she deserves it. She is phenomenal in this film. She’s the driving force of the horror, and pretty much every action she takes is anxiety-inducing. At the same time though, she is able to show the depth of grief felt by a mother who has lost her child. I know it’s a long shot because her performance is in a horror movie, but I’d put Sally Hawkins up against any actor in a drama from this year.
Danny Philippou and Bill Hinzman should also be nominated for Best Original Screenplay.
Bring Her Back Trivia
There’s a web site, blackangeltapes.net, which is made up to look like a marketplace for cursed objects and items dealing with death and the supernatural. One of the items for “sale” is the VHS tape that Laura uses in Bring Her Back to learn the ritual. If you check the page for the tape, you can see messages Laura sent asking many questions about the ritual and what to do when things go wrong. She uses the screen name PomPom, which is the name of her stuffed dog in the movie.
Also on the blackangeltapes.net site, you can find a listing for the embalmed hand from Talk To Me. There are other objects as well, and it will be interesting to see if any of them pop up in future movies.
Michael and Danny Philippou were attached to the Street Fighter movie as directors, but they dropped out to focus on Bring Her Back. They’re fans of Street Fighter and were excited to work on a new film adaptation of it, but the opportunity to make something original was the more enticing option for them. They also noted that the pressure to not mess up an IP as beloved as Street Fighter was on their minds.
