Parents' Guide to Bring Her Back

This Australian horror movie struggles with some of its plot logic, but it's still a dark, emotional powerhouse of an experience, dealing with grief while using water as a murderous metaphor. Bring Her Back is Australian filmmaking brothers Danny and Michael Philippou's follow-up to their equally brutal Talk to Me. It has several moments that could knock viewers out of the movie by raising questions about how the characters are so easily manipulated in certain sequences—including one especially iffy sequence in which Andy goes for help but does it in the most clueless way possible. But the movie's emotions are on point, and it's hard not to get caught up in feelings of loss, mourning, and anguish.

The Philippous create a cold, inky visual scheme with water everywhere, always deadly. Characters drown or are almost drowned, are killed in showers, or get injured on slippery surfaces. A rainstorm figures prominently, and even the urine Laura uses to humiliate Andy (and the ice keeping a corpse frozen) might count as malevolent uses of liquid. And the three central actors give very strong, convincing performances; it's unsurprising that Hawkins is impressive in a much darker role than she usually gets (it's similar to Hugh Grant's transformation in Heretic), but Wong—who in real life is blind in one eye and has severe vision loss in the other—makes her acting debut a moment to remember. Bring Her Back isn't exactly an easy watch, but it has a genuineness that's hard to deny.