A movie to disturb the comfortable and also disturb the disturbed, Bring Her Back is the kind of thing I'll probably never watch again, but I'm glad to have seen it the one time. Not sure if it says anything good about me, but horror is the one genre that's able to get to me and reliably make me feel things, so bring on the gnarly stuff. I like it if a movie makes me feel something, even if those feelings aren't pleasant emotions.
There are some familiar horror things here, but I think the Philippou brothers push things far enough to ensure it doesn't really feel derivative while the movie is playing out. Looking back on it, it's kind of like, "Oh yeah, maybe it's not really all that original," but in the moment, Bring Her Back is visceral and intense. There's a very brutal scene that goes for the jugular a bit before the halfway mark, and from there, things do take off... but I think I felt more dread before that point. The knowing that things will go there might've been a stronger feeling than seeing things actually going there. That being said, when things go there, it was still impactful. It's just maybe this would've messed with me more, somehow, if it had never gone full throttle. Though then it would probably just feel like a Michael Haneke film, for better or worse.
I don't really want to say too much about the plot. It's a movie with a fairly limited setting and not many characters, and so saying anything about where those characters go and what they do has the effect of kind of giving away most of the film, potentially undermining the limited (but not non-existent) surprises on offer here in the process. That ties into that whole notion of the experience in the moment being much more striking than thinking back on the movie and trying to break it down. It's a rollercoaster; I was thrilled while it was happening, a bit nauseous right after it finished, and kind of moving on with my life an hour or two later (while not at all regretting going on the ride itself).
