With 'Bring Her Back,' Sally Hawkins Shows Her Dark Side and Creates a New Horror Monster

Editor’s note: The following contains spoilers for ‘Bring Her Back’After submerging audiences in intense dread in Talk to Me, directors Danny Philippou and Michael Philippou return to the supernatural in their second film, but they don’t rely on the same scares. An embalmed hand isn’t causing terror, but the overwhelming pain that stems from grief is carried over from Talk to Me. In Bring Her Back, Laura is a mother who will do whatever it takes to resurrect her late daughter, and the Philippou brothers cast two-time Oscar nominee Sally Hawkins in the haunting role. Laura is as eccentric as some of the other women that Hawkins has played in the past, but increasingly disturbing behavior makes for a frightening and deeply uncomfortable performance.

Sally Hawkins’ Role in ‘Bring Her Back’ Is Unlike Anything She’s Done Before

A supporting role in Blue Jasmine earned Sally Hawkins her first Oscar nomination, but her second nomination for the lead in The Shape of Water provided further evidence that she could be the star. As Elisa, a mute woman who falls in love with the captured Amphibian Man (Doug Jones), Hawkins goes without dialogue to express her desires, worries, and quirks. Director Guillermo del Toro‘s visual style is anchored by Hawkins’ performance, which helps viewers accept the feelings Elisa has for the creature as genuine. Warmer and kinder is her role as Mrs. Brown in the first two Paddington films, where she becomes the surrogate mother for the talking bear. She wears her eccentricity on her sleeve in her love for adventure. It’s a completely accidental bit of foreshadowing that, in one scene in the first Paddington, Hawkins pulls out a collection of unusual objects from her handbag, including a small wooden hand model that looks a lot like the embalmed item from Talk to Me.

Perhaps it was fate then that she would star in the second film by the Philippou brothers, however, none of her previous performances are like what she does in Bring Her Back. Hawkins herself wasn’t sure if she could handle the role. The directing duo wrote it for her, saying in an interview with Inverse that they did so without knowing if she would agree to do it, and thankfully, she took on the challenge. While Bring Her Back also features an unsettling child performance by Jonah Wren Phillips, Hawkins also deserves recognition for making Bring Her Back the devastating and horrific feel-bad horror film of 2025.

A Deadly Ritual Could Give Laura What She Wants in ‘Bring Her Back’

Hawkins plays Laura, a foster mother who takes in orphaned step-siblings, the visually impaired Piper (Sora Wong), and the protective Andy (Billy Barratt), to share the home with the unsettling Oliver (Phillips), a volatile boy in Laura’s care. When she takes a picture with the siblings, purposely cutting off Andy in the frame, it sets up a series of escalations as Laura drives a wedge between the siblings. Knowing about the abuse Andy’s father inflicted on him (something Piper doesn’t know about), Laura cruelly manipulates the boy by forcing him to approach his father’s casket at the wake to kiss the corpse and, in a more extreme move, Laura pours her own urine onto him, making him think he’s starting to wet the bed, leaving him to blame himself for emotional distress.

The motive for this is so Laura can complete an occult ritual to resurrect her late daughter in Piper’s body. The big smile Hawkins puts on as Laura, along with the cozy purple in her clothes and nail polish, is disingenuous. Any warmth the actress portrayed as Elisa or Mrs. Brown is twisted and squeezed like a wet rag. The droplets left behind will eventually dry up as Laura’s grief becomes uncontrollable. Each transgression of hers is shocking, leading to the moment she doses herself in Andy’s body spray and slams a fist into Piper’s face as she sleeps to trick the girl into believing it was her brother. The evil acts done by Laura come from the misery over the drowning of her child, and Sally Hawkins makes you pity Laura as much as fear her. Like the all-consuming grief that sees Mia (Sophie Wilde) become addicted to the embalmed hand in Talk to Me, Bring Her Back finds another road where grief can drag someone down.

‘Bring Her Back’ Updates Past Horror Monsters

Image via A24

The Philippou brothers said in their interview with Inverse how they were inspired by “psycho-biddy films and Bette Davis” in creating Laura. That older subgenre was known for featuring older women slipping into madness, with the most famous entry being What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, starring Davis and Joan Crawford. But the “psycho-biddy” inspiration is given an extra edge by what this modern horror film can get away with. Sally Hawkins becomes even more monstrous in how Laura resembles two unhinged women that can be seen as belonging to the “psycho-biddy” subgenre. Taking in a pair of siblings to then destroy their safety is like the witch from Hansel & Gretel. The house may not be made out of gingerbread, but the colorful beads that hang from a doorway and other beautiful flourishes in Laura’s house attempt to mask the darkness within.

There are shades of Kathy Bates from Misery in Laura as well. Instead of a nurse obsessing over her favorite author, Laura is a nefarious caregiver, obsessed with reuniting with her dead daughter. But the longer the dread mounts in Bring Her Back, viewers sense that the siblings won’t be able to rescue themselves from the trap they are in. From “psycho-biddy” films to fairy tales and a Stephen King adaptation, the Philippou brothers and Sally Hawkins turn Laura into a human monster that feels distinct to this film’s harrowing themes. The warmth of Hawkins’ other roles is drowned in grief to become something vile. You never know what Laura will do next, and she is prepared to do anything to get what she wants.

Bring Her Back is now playing in theaters.