BRING HER BACK

The film opens with grainy footage of a ritual being performed. A girl is placed in the middle while a bloated man walks into a drawn-out ring with her. The girl is hung by the neck before a second girl is revived. The camera focuses on the second girl’s face, who has a wine-colored birthmark under her eye.

Piper (Sora Wong), a blind teenage girl, tries to approach a trio of girls her age at a bus stop to try and make friends. She is met by her stepbrother Andy (Billy Barratt), who guides her away as the girls mock Piper behind her back. The two live with Andy’s father Phil (Stephen Phillips), until Phil winds up dead in the shower from a drug overdose.

Andy and Piper meet with a social worker, Wendy (Sally-Anne Upton). She has Piper set up in foster care with a woman, Laura (Sally Hawkins), while Andy is set to be moved to a separate home. He protests that he and Piper are meant to stick together, but Wendy brings up how Andy got into trouble in his youth, something that he never mentioned to Piper, and Laura might take issue with that. With a little more push, Andy gets Wendy to talk Laura into letting both siblings join her.

The two are brought to Laura’s home, which she inhabits with a mute boy named Oliver (Jonah Wren Phillips), whom she claims is her nephew. Andy accidentally lets Laura’s cat out, and it starts to scratch Oliver’s body. He also has a similar mark under his eye like the girl in the video. Laura lets Piper stay in the room that belonged to her late daughter Cathy (Mischa Heywood). Later, Laura watches the video of the cult ritual from the beginning. The process involves having someone possessed by an “angel” consume “the old body”, while a second person is killed, and the spirit from the old body is placed inside the new body to resurrect them.

Laura shows obvious favoritism towards Piper and is a bit rude with Andy, calling him by a different name on purpose. She also later swipes Andy’s phone and sees that he texted another friend about Oliver, calling him a “fucking weirdo”.

Laura takes Andy and Piper to Phil’s funeral. Piper asks Andy how their dad looks, but he lies to her and says that he looks good. Laura lets it slip that Andy didn’t even look at Phil, despite Piper saying “grapefruit” (the siblings’ word for telling the whole truth). Andy goes back inside and looks upon Phil’s body. Laura then tells Andy to give his father a kiss, as it is “customary”. Andy kisses Phil’s forehead, but Laura insists that he go for the lips, which she does herself.

Later that night, Laura gets Andy and Piper drunk as they have a little dance party. When Piper goes to sleep, Andy and Laura stay up and talk about personal things. Laura mentions that Cathy passed away from drowning in the pool outside the house, and how her loss deeply affected her life. Andy tells Laura that Phil was abusive to him and that he only felt like he had the family he always wanted when he married Piper’s mother. Andy also claims that Phil abused him and that he never told Piper about it so that her view on the man would not be shattered.

After Andy goes to bed, Laura urinates into a cup and throws it onto Andy’s pants while he sleeps to make him think that he wet the bed. She also unlocks his phone and deletes any pictures of Oliver and the surrounding area. Laura gives Oliver a bath, and he appears to have his eyes turn bright red.

The following afternoon, Andy is left at home with Oliver. He tries to get Oliver to communicate with him by writing something on a piece of paper. Andy then feeds Oliver pieces of cantaloupe after cutting it apart, but Oliver takes the knife and begins chewing on the blade, causing damage to his mouth and teeth. Andy begins to rush the boy to the hospital, but when they get past a large white ring that surrounds the house, Oliver begins to writhe in agony, and his skin appears to burn and blister. Laura and Piper arrive home in time for Laura to tend to Oliver while watching the cult tape and figuring out how to calm him down. Andy sees that he only wrote “bird” on the paper.

Andy, who has been avoiding showers due to the trauma of finding his father dead in one, starts to take a shower when he sees what looks like Phil’s ghost walking by. He mutters “she’ll die in the rain”, which Andy thinks is about Piper. In a panic, he slips and hits his head, landing him in the hospital. He notices it is raining and he begins to worry about Piper, which he expresses to Laura. She goes back home and plays with Piper in the rain. Piper suggests that she and Andy will find their own place and still visit Laura. She then brings Piper to a shed where she makes her feel Cathy’s frozen corpse inside a freezer.

In an effort to turn Piper against Andy, Laura sprays herself with his body spray and goes into Piper’s room to punch her hard in the face, leaving her with a black eye. Laura makes Piper think that Andy did it and that he was hiding Phil’s abuse of him from her out of envy. Andy attempts to record Oliver standing outside in the rain, leading to a struggle where Laura makes Piper think that Andy hit her.

While Laura takes Piper to the rec center to play Goalball, Andy goes to the police station to file a report. He sees a missing child poster for a boy named Connor Bird, and he realizes it’s Oliver. Andy brings the flyer to Wendy and tries to convince her that Laura kidnapped Connor and is passing her off as her nephew. Back at home, Oliver is trashing the house, consuming everything he can. While Laura tries to stop him, he bites a huge chunk of flesh off her arm. Oliver then proceeds to start chewing on the thick wooden table, wrecking his mouth further with splinters, before he bites off a large strip of flesh from his own arm and begins eating it. Laura then manages to subdue Oliver and gets him to begin the process of “eating the old body”, so he starts eating Cathy’s flesh.

Laura overhears a message that Andy left for Piper, affirming his love for her as her brother and trying to warn her about Laura. Realizing he and Wendy are on their way, she begins to frantically clean up Oliver’s mess. Wendy goes inside and appears to find nothing wrong, while Andy goes breaks into Laura’s shed to find Oliver with Cathy’s corpse. Wendy notices Laura’s bloody arm and realizes something is indeed wrong. Laura drops the act and starts to say that they can “bring her back”. Andy calls for Wendy, who discovers the grisly scene. Before they can run for help, Laura drives her van into both of them, running Wendy over and severely injuring Andy. Laura finishes the job by drowning Andy in a puddle before going to pick up Piper.

When Piper gets home, she finds Oliver and feels his head. She realizes that he has a buzzcut and not “red curly hair” like Laura had made her believe. She also feels around and discovers Andy’s body, identified by his braces. Piper realizes Andy was telling the truth about Laura. As Piper tries to run away, she accidentally knocks herself out. Laura begins to drag Piper out to the pool as it is raining, to recreate the circumstances of Cathy’s death. Piper struggles and calls Laura “mum”. This causes Laura to relent and find herself unable to kill Piper, so she lets her go.

Laura takes Cathy’s corpse out of the freezer and opens the wound on her arm to let herself bleed out. Oliver walks past the ring outside the house, and he begins to regurgitate and expel what was possessing him. Piper runs until she is found by a couple that takes her to safety. She overhears Andy’s final message to her and then overhears a plane flying overhead, which Andy had earlier told her meant was a sign that their dad went to Heaven, so Piper smiles upon hearing it. Police then arrive at Laura’s house, where they find Oliver, who identifies himself as Connor Bird. The police then go to the pool and find a dead Laura cradling Cathy’s body.