It's A Banger

When I went to see the film, a teenager in front of me was playing full matches of Call of Duty Mobile on his phone with full brightness up, how nice.

It's always a good sign when people actually remember the names of characters in horror movies

3:29 A Wild Io has appeared!

Fun fact: the visually disabled girl playing Piper is indeed actually visually disabled and had no professional acting experience at all (just her school plays). Her mum saw a call for auditions on Facebook and the rest is history. Amazing she's never been in anything before, cos she acted extremely well too IMO

I think the ending makes sense even more when you remember that the lady says that she would do anything to hear her daughter call her “mom” one last time. Piper comes up from the water the second time she calls the woman “mom” and that’s when she breaks and can’t commit to the ritual anymore.

I had a friend criticize Bring Her Back as being “just another grief allegory movie” which I thought was a dull take. Grief is a theme but it’s not what the movie is about. It’s also about trauma, child @buse, gaslighting, and how social programs just utterly fail children at times. I felt like the movie was incredibly effective and well written. Anything the Phillipou Bros make from now on is a must see imo.

*SPOILER* 9:09 I get your complaint but I think you left a bit of the nuance on why she gave up. Throughout the movie Laura is trying to put her daughter in Piper because she sees so much of her daughter in Piper. As the film progresses, you see her start to become attached to Piper albeit for nefarious means. At the end, Piper does a Hail Mary play to try and save herself by calling Laura "mom." That breaks Laura and ultimately stops her because I think Laura realizes then that she could have just moved on and not done any of what she did. Her grief just overtook her and she lost herself. My take away from it at least.

10:06 you forgot that piper literally cried “mommy” i think that helped triggered that ptsd episode of reminded her of that moment that stopped her

She couldn't do it because Piper called her "mum". Screamed it desperately at her, at the brink of death. Broke her will to follow through,. It was set up ("I would give anything to hear her call me mum again"), but it's hard to hear that that's what she was screaming, so I understand how you missed it. But as somebody who caught it, and had given up all hope of Piper finding any avenue for survival as soon as she went into the pool, if not before; it was perfect. Made every lick of sense.

I havent seen a lot of people bring this up, but when Piper looks out of the car at the end of the movie and sees the plane, thats a callback to the beginning when Andy says to her, "when you die, you dont get buried, you dont burn, you fly like plane" or something to that degree. Even my wife didnt catch it. Also, another thing, Ollie wrote bird on the paper that Andy gave him, because he was wrestling with the demon inside of him trying to take control again, and all he could muster on that paper was his last name, which you dont find out what his full name is until Andy sees it on that missing child poster. Theres so many small things in this movie. Its so good.