So Monday night we went to see the latest Cineworld Secret Screaming. I usually try to avoid these as I dont massively keep up with horror releases due to my love for slashers and not paranormal horrors. However, I was aware of the rumoured showing and decided to go anyway especially as I'd seen that this one wasn't actually scary at all and was in fact a bit crap.
It's fair to say those early reviews were correct. Sally Hawkins was not enough to save this movie in any way shape or form and to be honest it was just a grief ridden mess.
Bring Her Back follows a pair of step siblings as they are forced into foster care following their abusive father's death. There's a threat that the siblings are to be separated but as Piper is blind, Andy fights to stay with her.
They get sent to Laura, an eccentric councillor who dotes on Piper but is not a fan of Andy, there's also another child, Oliver, who exhibits extremely strange behaviour from the off. I was on my guard and ready to walk out at any sign of the cat being murdered as that's a big no no for me and the main reason why I havent watched Smile.
As we pass through the next few days we see Laura try to push Andy out, at first we arent sure why, but it soon comes to light that 'Oliver' is possessed by a demon who we later learn is able to resurrect the dead once he's consumed the flesh of both the dead person and the one sacrificed as a host for them to return.
Laura had a daughter who was blind just like Piper, she had died in the pool and Laura's plan was to murder Piper and have Cathy resurrected into her body. In order to do this she needed to get rid of Andy, sadly she succeeds but not in the initial no harm way she had intended.
Without giving too many other spoilers as I'm aware this movie hasn't actually released properly yet, the primary survivors are Piper and Connor (you'll find out) in an extremely sad wrap up of the film.
Bring Her Back massively centres around grief and how it drives people to do the most strange and desperate of things. With Andy it was to shut down and try to protect his sister while hiding the abuse he faced at the hands of his father. He was traumatised. With Piper it was to latch onto any parental figure. With Laura it was to kidnap a child to host a demon, keep her dead daughter in the freezer, and attempt to murder a little girl in order to resurrect her dead child. Perfectly normal... oops there goes my spoilers!
The trailer had made it seem far more paranormally involved than the movie actually was. The demon was a background character growing impatient at the prospect of the kill instead of the movie's focus. The actual narrative centred almost solely on the effects of grief and then later Laura's murderous plot. We didn't actually see much of the demon at all actually. 'Oliver' was locked away or off screen and only there when the plot actually needed him, this of course was when it suddenly remembered it was a horror film. To be honest I think this would have been a much better film without the demon. If they'd removed the demon entirely and just had Laura struggling to let go of her daughter and have literally everything else that happened still in there, then I think perhaps this may have been a moving and successful film. But because they tried to justify her behaviour with a demon and tried to market this as a horror it failed. As a psychological thriller type movie this would have pushed the boundaries and really shown how grief could affect a person. It drove her to murder two bystanders in order to get her daughter back, if it had turned into her trying to merely imprint Cathy onto Piper like we saw in the film and then removed the bit where she tried to murder her, or perhaps Piper rejected her and she then tries to murder her, regardless, the absence of the life giving demon would have made it all better.
The most we saw regarding the demon's abilities was where it could shape shift or mimic what it had eaten. Laura fed it some of the siblings' fathers hair and it mimicked him in order to spook Andy. It made cat noises after eating the cat's tail, it mimicked Andy to entice Piper after snacking on a bit of his corpse. Considering the demon was so strong it also seemed like it was overpowered by Connor quite easily especially at the end. Either that or it knew that it wasn't going to feed after the chaos in the final sequence and so let itself free.
I hated the fact that after all he went through, Andy died. I wanted him to go away with Piper, but I guess this was added realism as there was no way really he was going to survive, that's fine. But I just needed more horror from a horror film and I cant believe I'm saying that. The marketing for the movie relies solely on 'Oliver' and Sally Hawkins indicating that it's more to do with this possessed kid than it is. I think that'd why we got to see a preview of this movie instead of something like I Know What You Did Last Summer as they know bums will be on seats with that one but with Bring Her Back there is no chance. While the events that unfolded were interesting and the storytelling ability was there, they lost it all with the involvement of the demon, that just made it seem like A-Level film studies material.
I'm giving Bring Her Back a 4/10. It killed a few hours, but I wouldn't bother with it again. As a side note this movie was the first time I've ever seen Sally in flat shoes and that was purely because she was feigning getting out of the shower. Otherwise those trademark high heels were on show yet again. That woman must have calves of steel.
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