WARNING: This article contains SPOILERS for Bring Her Back.

Filmmakers Danny and Michael Philipou have delivered a terrifying and powerful follow-up to their 2023 horror movie, Talk to Me, with Bring Her Back. Also produced by A24, the new film follows two orphaned siblings who are put under the foster care of a woman practicing dark magic to revive her ᴅᴇᴀᴅ daughter.

Many comparisons can be drawn between Talk to Me and 2025’s Bring Her Back. They are both shocking and gruesome supernatural horror films that explore similar themes and feature concepts involving ghosts and spiritual possession, with Talk to Me‘s embalmed hand allowing people to talk to ghosts and have their bodies possessed. Additionally, like Talk to Me, Bring Her Back has become Certified Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, earning a 90% rating from critics. While both films are exceptional and terrifying pictures by the Philippous, one is superior to the other in terms of the scares, performances, themes, and originality.

Bring Her Back vs. Talk To Me: Which One Is Scarier?

Talk To Me Features More Varied And Intense Scares

Bring Her Back is a much slower-burning horror movie than Talk to Me. The film evokes terror by creating an unsettling atmosphere and building tension through strange occurrences and gruesome imagery. However, many of Bring Her Back‘s biggest scares hinge a lot on eerie VHS footage and the possessed Oliver, who steals the show with his creepy mannerisms, demonic transformations, and ravenous feeding on human flesh, including his own.

Talk to Me wastes no time getting to the very scary stuff, with the first scene showing a possessed teenager suddenly cutting his brother and stabbing himself in the head. At the same time, the film effectively builds intense terror and tension without relying on jump scares. However, when Talk to Me does release surprise scares, it takes the extreme approach to frighten viewers with its violent, gory, and unsettling visuals. The possessed Riley is a prime example of this, suddenly bashing his face, mutilating himself, and even reveling in the pain, making the film’s horror especially shocking and memorable.

Bring Her Back vs. Talk To Me: Which Better Explores Grief?

Bring Her Back Shows A More Developed Depiction Of Grief

Grief is a core theme in both Talk to Me and Bring Her Back, with each film showing how people can struggle to cope with loss, with some going to dangerous lengths to get rid of their pain. Talk to Me shows Mia allowing herself to get possessed by spirits for the thrill of it, just to numb the pain of her mother’s death. She eventually uses the embalmed hand to communicate with the supposed ghost of her mother, showing how grief and addiction intertwine. However, the film doesn’t show Mia trying to undo her mother’s death.

Meanwhile, Bring Her Back explicitly shows Laura going through the stages of grief, specifically the bargaining stage. In Laura’s case, it’s Faustian bargaining, as she uses a dark ritual to try to transfer her daughter’s spirit to Piper’s body after killing the latter, using the possessed “Oliver” as a demonic conduit. Unlike Mia, Laura explicitly accepts her daughter’s death at the end of the film, backing out of the ritual and refusing to kill Piper after seeing the harm she is doing.

Bring Her Back vs. Talk To Me: Which Has Better Performances?

Talk To Me Shows A Lot More Range With Its Cast

Actor Sally Hawkins carries a lot of Bring Her Back with her well-rounded performance as Laura, who seamlessly shifts between being a loving, quirky, grieving, and conniving character throughout the film. Billy Barratt and Sora Wong also stand out for their layered and realistic performances as siblings Andy and Piper, and the young Jonah Wren Phillips delivers an extremely chilling performance as the silent but bloodthirsty Oliver, making for one of the most terrifying child characters in horror movie history.

Talk to Me‘s cast, which mainly consists of young adults, shows a lot more diversity in their acting skills. Many of them portray different personas as their characters are possessed by spirits summoned by the embalmed hand. For instance, unlike the mostly silent and subdued Phillips, Joe Bird displays a lot more range as Riley in Talk to Me before and after the character is possessed, making his transformation especially terrifying. Like Hawkins, Sophie Wilde holds up Talk to Me as the flawed but sympathetic protagonist, Mia, while portraying many other terrifying characters inhabiting her body.

Bring Her Back vs. Talk To Me: Which Story Is More Original

Talk To Me Uses Possession To Tell A Clever, Unusual Tale With Relevant Themes

Talk to Me puts a new spin on horror classics like The Exorcist by using possession as a clever metaphor for addiction in the modern age of smartphones, social media, and substance abuse. The fact that the characters willingly live-stream videos of themselves letting ghosts take over their bodies reflects how far young adults are willing to go to get high and garner digital likes. It also shows how such reckless behavior can have disastrous, life-threatening results, as some of the characters use the embalmed hand for too long, lose control of themselves, and end up hurting themselves and others.

On the other hand, the story of Bring Her Back doesn’t add anything that fresh to the horror genre, specifically the possession subgenre. The movie’s originality primarily stems from its execution, with the way bodily possession and the transfer of spirits work in the story making it distinctive enough. However, audiences have already seen shadowy cults and families putting spirits into people’s bodies in many other horror films, including Ari Aster and A24’s Hereditary.

Talk To Me Is Better Than Bring Her Back

Talk To Me Outranks Bring Her Back With Its Scares, Cast, And Unique Story

In the end, the Philippous’ first two horror movies are emotional, gut-wrenching pictures that are difficult to forget, but Talk to Me stands as the best of the two. Bring Her Back presents a deeper, more well-rounded analysis of grief than Talk to Me through Laura’s character arc and Hawkins’ compelling performance. Despite that, Talk to Me triumphs over Bring Her Back by showing a greater versatility in its cast and its scares, with the latter starting right from the film’s beginning and hitting audiences hard with several visceral scenes.

Bring Her Back may have immediately become one of A24’s best horror movies. Nevertheless, two years after its release, Talk to Me remains a distinctive kind of possession movie that will more likely stand out in the years to come than Bring Her Back due to the inventive use of its concept to reflect several relevant issues and unleash many surprising and memorable scares.