I can’t do this review without intense spoilers. So before going any further, consider that. Because they shall come fast and furious. You already saw the star rating if that’s enough for you.

Bring Her Back is the sophomore production by the team that brought us the wonderfully dark Talk To Me. This time around we start with a video of a Russian event where people are being tortured (it appears), but we really don’t know because there are no subtitles nor English speakers at this point. We don’t understand what this is about until like ¾ of the way through the movie. So forget it for now, even though it is important.

Jumping to the main characters, we have Piper (a young blind teen girl) and Andy (on the cusp of turning 18.) Two siblings through marriage who find themselves in a dire predicament when Andy’s father dies (Piper’s mom having died sometime earlier.) Now part of the system, the system wants to separate them to place them in new homes. They get around that and find themselves living under the roof of Laura, an eccentric woman in her forties. When Piper and Andy get there, they find another child already living there. Ollie. Laura tells them he is her son. Ollie’s story is rather peculiar here, because she keeps him locked in a room pretty much at all times. We eventually find out there is more to Ollie and he doesn’t seem in control of himself in any way. 

As things play out in the first third of the movie, Laura seems to just be a woman looking to raise a foster daughter in place of her daughter who died. But in the second third of it, we see that Laura is extremely crazy. She begins engaging in actions that are directly harmful to Andy as well as things to try and make Piper think Andy is hurting her. The first real sign of Laura being crazy comes at the funeral of Andy’s dad. Laura leans in close and produces a small scissor that she then uses to snip some hair from the corpse. A strange thing to do, and an indication that she has nefarious plans. Later she feeds the hair to Ollie, who devours it readily. Shortly after that, while Andy is taking a shower, he hears his father speaking to him. Stepping out he slips on the wet floor and conveniently gets a concussion, not noticing that Ollie is in the bathroom with him. And thus Andy and Piper are separated, allowing Laura to begin drawing Piper closer to her. The concussion was frustrating to me, because had this not happened, Laura would have been hard pressed to pursue the plan she was working on. There is also a weird moment in the hospital where Laura says to Andy that she killed his dad. But then the conversation moves on and is never referenced again. WHAT… There should have been a flashback inserted here showing it happen. After Andy returns from the hospital, Laura waits for Piper to fall asleep then douses herself with Andy’s body spray so she can assault Piper and Piper will assume the attack was from Andy due to the smell. And this works, causing Piper to claim she smelled Andy. BUT… This is a major story problem. Laura would still smell like the body spray! This is overlooked though, and the accusation causes Andy to lash out. He tries to get Piper to leave with him, but she turns to Laura. Despondent, Andy leaves heading for the agency that placed them with Laura. He convinces Wendy to go back with him, in part because he claims that Ollie is actually Connor Bird, a missing child.

There is a darkness I have been wanting to see explored more in stories, and this movie is another example of it. After Wendy and Andy come back to Laura’s house, when they discover the dead body of Cathy, they try to flee. Laura runs them over. Killing Wendy and injuring Andy. She then descends on Andy and pushes his face into a puddle until he stops struggling.

At this point, Laura goes back out to retrieve Piper. On bringing Piper back home from a special needs sort of play area, she gets suspicious that something is wrong. They scuffle and Piper makes her way to the bathroom and locks the door. In this room she finds the body of Andy, and for a moment I worried that he was going to stir and awaken. Which would have been a terrible moment, because he was certainly dead. Luckily they didn’t pull a mysterious survival for Andy. He is dead. Piper is able to tell it is him because of his braces. After some more struggling between Piper and Laura, Laura wins out. She then takes Piper outside where Ollie is waiting. The intent is to drown Piper, because as the ritual detailed in the video tape Laura has, Ollie shall devour the soul from the dead body of Cathy and then vomit it into the recently deceased body of Piper. As Cathy had drowned, Piper needs to also drown in order for it to work properly. Laura forces Piper under the water as she prepares the way for Cathy to return. This struggle is perhaps my biggest issue in the entire movie. Piper was on the brink of death before Laura began drowning her. After a brief struggle underwater, Piper comes up for air and still has fight left in her, but then Laura pushes her under again. The way this plays out, there is no way Piper doesn’t die. The struggling directly leads to her screaming underwater several times. The amount of water she would have taken in would surely have killed her. And I wish this would have led to the ending. Ollie then vomits Cathy’s soul into Piper and there is then a reunion between Laura and Piper/Cathy. This is a dark ending that would have been delightful… Instead we get a world where Piper overcomes Laura and escapes. She makes it to a road where a car stops and helps her leading to a happy ending for Piper, but nobody else. Well, Ollie (Connor Bird) presumably has a happy ending of sorts. Although we never know what impact the nature of his “soul transferring” ability has on him. He had a tremendous amount of trauma inflicted on him, not counting the devouring of parts of his own arm.

This movie does officially take place in the same world as Talk To Me, even though there isn’t anything within the movie to outright spell it out. It could be interesting to see a third movie from these filmmakers that expands on the world. Showing a connection between the restless dead from Talk to Me and the ghoulish entity possessing Ollie allowing him to resurrect the dead. It also gives another reason to avoid ever going to Australia. Is there anything not scary in that place?

But where does this leave me? I think Talk To Me is a better movie. That isn’t to say this one is bad. I mostly relatively enjoyed it. I think. There are parts of it I really want to rewatch. There are parts that confused me. Frustrated me. Parts that were fascinating and spooky. But in a world where we get 4 direct to streaming new Amityville movies a year, Bring Her Back was unique. It told a new story. Does it stumble a bit? Sure. We all do though. And I don’t want to overly penalize this movie, because it did take a swing. I will always love those that take swings. With that in mind, I feel this lands between a 6 and 7. I shall err on the side of graciousness and call it a 7 star rating.