Bring Her Back (2025) And the Psychology of Grief in Horror
While I saw Bring Her Back (2025), directed by the Philippou brothers (the minds behind 2022’s Talk to Me the week that it premiered, I had to give myself time to process my feelings and collect my thoughts because this film is very heavy. In fact, after the film was over, no one in my packed theater moved, and once they did, no one really spoke. Bring Her Back opens with a graphic ritual played on an old, grainy VHS tape; while this sets the tone of confusion and swirling mournful anticipation, the film is about loss at its core.
Not just any loss but the paralysis, desperation, and distorted longing that can follow a loved one’s death. Grief and horror often go together, showing up as poltergeists or cursed-laced dolls, but in Bring Her Back, grief is both the catalyst for victimhood and a silent accusation that amplifies the worst qualities of the left behind.
Love, Loss, and Resurrection in Bring Her Back
After the strange ritualistic opening, Bring Her Back truly starts with step-siblings Andy (played by Billy Barratt) and Piper (played by Sora Wong) coping with the sudden death of their father. The two are thrust into the foster care system, where they are soon placed into the home of Laura (Sally Hawkin, who played the lead in 2017’s The Shape of Water), a foster mother who is still mourning the death of her daughter Cathy. It should be noted that both Cathy and Piper are visually impaired, and while I won’t directly spoil the film’s plot, this becomes unnervingly significant. I want to quickly mention that Wong has coloboma and microphthalmia, which is not only grounds in the film in realism, but is fantastic for disability in horror representation.
With foster children Andy and Piper as both witnesses and participants, Laura attempts to resurrect Cathy. What follows is a visceral, grotesquely intimate ritual that upends the boundary between maternal devotion and abomination. The grief in the film becomes a sinister driving force that embodies a chorus of guilt, regret, and overwhelming yearning.
Tackling Grief in Horror Cinema
While grief has long haunted horror, as the genre itself is a lens by which we tackle our own comfortable truths; it seems in the last decade, loss is no longer just a backstory but a thematic fixture. To best understand this prominent horror theme, I often use psychiatrist Elisabeth Küble’s The Five States of Grief as a reference, which was popular in her book On Death and Dying.
They are as follows:
Denial: The refusal to accept loss or reality, often manifesting as skepticism, repression, or avoidance.
Anger: Lashing out at others or the self; externalizing pain as blame, rage, or violence.
Bargaining: Attempting to make deals to undo or lessen the loss (“If I just do this, maybe…”).
Depression: A deep, isolating sadness and loss of will or purpose.
Acceptance: Accepting the loss, even if peace remains uneasy.
Films like The Babadook (2014), Hereditary (2018), and The Haunting of Hill House (2018) lean heavily into these stages. They represent grief through monsters, generational curses, and spectral metaphors. For example, The Babadook is clearly about denial, while Hereditary certainly exists in anger. In The Haunting of Hill House, each sibling’s behavior mirrors a different stage, making the entire series a study of fragmented mourning.
However, what separates Bring Her Back and even the brothers’ earlier film, Talk to Me, from these other works is the director’s evident obsession with bargaining and grief. In Talk to Me, Mia begs for just another moment with her mother’s ghost, even if it means sacrificing her own life or that of Riley (her best friend’s younger brother). In Bring Her Back, Laura seeks to trade a living child to resurrect her own. This isn’t just symbolic grief, as with the other films; it is transactional, bodily, and ritualistic. In Bring Her Back, the horror does not emerge because of grief; it is grief. As a result, the film goes into even darker territory, ranging from cannibalism to child abuse.
The Cinematic Language of Mourning
When I first saw Talk to Me, my partner and I agreed that while the film showed promise, it also revealed the Philippous’ inexperience. We were genuinely excited about their future as directors though, and with Bring Her Back, they’ve more than fulfilled that potential. Every frame, sound, and angle expresses sorrow not just as a mood but as a physical experience.
Some of the standout aspects of the cinematic experience were:
Cinematography
Laura is consistently framed in tight, suffocating spaces. The camera often lingers uncomfortably close, creeping toward her face as the shadows grow longer, visually mimicking how grief closes in.
POV Shifts
In the third act, the perspective shifts to Piper, whose fragmented, blurry gaze not only reflects her visual impairment but also gives the general subconscious look of a child trying to comprehend the horror unfolding around her. The visual distortion mimics emotional disorientation.
Sound Design
The film forgoes traditional horror scoring. Instead, grief is heard in layers of breath, hiss, and irregular pulses. One critic described it as “glass poured in the ear”, an auditory metaphor for emotional rupture.
Lighting and Color Palette
Muted colors dominate the screen, dusty greens, grays, and browns, evoking decay and stagnation. Flickering candlelight adds ritualistic eeriness, making the resurrection scenes feel sacred and rotten.
Analog Texture
VHS artifacts, static, and screen glitches visually reinforce the idea of grief as memory degrading. The resurrection tapes themselves feel cursed not just by content but by the medium.
Together, these elements create a blanket of emotional texture that makes the brothers’ works truly distinct and wholly sensory.
Blackangeltapes.net and Expanded Lore
The film Bring Her Back is a masterpiece that showcases an underrepresented look at hidden human monsters driven by pain and loss. However, the brothers, along with A24, did not stop there. They also created the website blackangeltapes.net, which expands the film’s mythology. Ostensibly, the website is a dark web marketplace that sells cursed artifacts tied to both films.
In fact, you will not only find the Tari Resurrection Tape (which is what Laura is referencing), but you can also see her fictional posts on the tape’s listing. It is not only a fun gag and ARG (alternative reality game), but it also underpins another concept of grief that the Philippou brothers seem to be invested in – that grief is consumable. As you explore the site, you enter a world where mourning can be ritualized, immortalized, and trafficked.
Grief As a Monster That Never Dies
Bring Her Back is an accomplished film with gory moments that may sometimes go too far, but it does not lose sight of the central theme. Unlike typical horror that externalizes evil, this film internalizes pain. It’s a cautionary tale of what happens when mourning becomes a ritual without release.
I look forward to the brothers' future films and am curious to see if they continue exploring this particular stage of grief in their work.
Your Behind-The-Screen Questions Answered For Bring Her Back
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They once explained that Talk to Me began with bodily horror, but Bring Her Back leans fully into emotional terror, born from a real-life family tragedy involving their cousin. The filmmakers have said the story’s rawness stems from trying to “translate real trauma into horror”
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“We traded jump scares for sustained dread,” Danny said, pointing to their transition from viral-style stunts to emotionally mature storytelling. They’ve called Bring Her Back “another league,” a darker, more intimate exploration of grief.
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Yes! In a recent interview, the brothers confirmed both films exist within the same “ritualistic horror universe.” Blackangeltapes.net helps reinforce the idea that these stories share occult threads and cursed artifacts.
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Yes. However, it is not constant. The film has a few deeply unsettling and graphic moments, including cannibalism, self mutilation, and more.
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The horror is mostly atmospheric and emotional. Tension builds slowly, and while there are some startling images and sound cues, the film avoids typical jump-scare tactics in favor of dread and unease.
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Sort of. Without revealing too much, a taxidermied dog plays a symbolic and unsettling role. While not shown dying onscreen, it may still be upsetting for sensitive viewers.
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Extremely. Grief is the central theme, and it’s portrayed with painful realism. Many viewers report needing time to process it afterward. Be prepared for themes of child loss, child abuse, manipulation, and psychological trauma.
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A deep dive into Bring Her Back (2025) and how the Philippou brothers use grief as horror’s true antagonist in their most mature film yet.