Another Halloween season, another A24 movie to roll my eyes at in the faint hope that something will live up to the mighty Witch movie I fell in love with so many years ago. Could Bring Her Back bring me back from the edge of despair when it came to finding a horror movie that can leave an impact on me in the same way The Witch did? In short, yes, it most certainly delivered. While it doesn’t have quite the same charisma as The Witch, it’s without question the best horror movie I’ve watched from this studio since that film first graced my eyes and ears. I wouldn’t regularly make such a big deal out of that, but given how pessimistic I am when it comes to modern horror, finding something like this is a rare feat.
The movie establishes its creepy mood right off the bat with scenes of an old ritual that appears to be bringing the dead back to life. From there, we jump into a more modern storyline involving a teenage girl and her brother, with sympathy being established for the girl due to a vision condition that causes her eye to shift, something I later found was an actual condition of the actress Sora Wong, who absolutely knocked this role out of the park. The vision impairment lends itself to the story in more ways than one. As I said earlier, it sets a stage for sympathy once you see her getting made fun of by her peers, but these sympathies are subverted later in the movie. Not that you don’t care for the character later on, but it’s more of a case of thinking you’re being led down one path only to find it leading you in a totally different direction.
If you’re at all familiar with the movie The Shape of Water, you’re certainly familiar with the incomparable Sally Hawkins, who plays an extraordinarily creepy foster mother in this movie. She takes the kids in, and from the moment you’re introduced to her behavior, you know there’s something unsettling about her intentions. It’s not done in a direct way that shoves all these expositions down your throat, nothing in this movie is communicated like that. It’s all done with elegant subtleties that elevate the story into a realm that feels real and unnerving. Even the cinematography finds beauty in ugly shapes: dead landscapes giving way to a dreary sky, dirty atmospheres lit to reveal charm in all the haunting shapes. It’s masterfully done in a way that makes you appreciate the composition after you’ve watched it unfold.
I can’t give much away, as I’d advise going into this with as little knowledge as possible, but I will say the gore in this movie is some of the most effective I’ve seen in some time. It follows the same subtle nature I mentioned earlier, but in a way that makes you squirm from its realistic depictions of all we know to be painful and horrific. You know the moments I speak of, the ones that make you say “what the fuck?” over and over again. Those are nicely seasoned throughout the movie, with many of them happening in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it fashion. They take you by surprise, and before you know it, the movie is drawing to a close.
Bring Her Back tells its story with compelling composition, tastefully dreadful storytelling, and an ending that leaves a pit in the bottom of your heart and stomach. If you asked me whether I’ll watch this again, the answer might just be “no,” but that doesn’t discredit its brilliance. It just means I’m not ready to endure something like that again. That may change in the future when I’m craving something creepy, but for now, I’ll let this one rest in good company with other great horror films that left such a dreadful impact on me.
