The film opens with degraded, handheld footage of a clandestine rite. A girl stands hunched in the center of a chalked circle as a large, bloated man steps into the ring. The camera catches the girl being hoisted by the neck until she hangs limp. The shot cuts and the same tape shows a second girl lying motionless on the ground; seconds later she coughs, gasps, and opens her eyes. A dark, wine-colored birthmark beneath her left eye fills the frame before the tape ends.

Outside a bus shelter, seventeen-year-old Andy shepherds his much younger, partially sighted stepsister Piper through a swarm of teenagers. Piper, played by Sora Wong, tries to speak to a trio of girls waiting at the stop; the girls snicker and look away. Andy, portrayed by Billy Barratt, steps in and takes Piper's hand, leading her away while the others whisper. The siblings live with Andy's father, Phil, until one morning when Andy discovers Phil slumped in the shower, a needle and pills nearby. Phil, played by Stephen Phillips, is dead from what appears to be a drug overdose. Andy covers the body and calls the authorities.

At the social services office, Wendy, the caseworker, meets Andy and Piper. Wendy, played by Sally-Anne Upton, arranges foster placements: she initially plans to place Andy and Piper separately, but Andy insists they be kept together. He presses Wendy to contact Laura, a former child therapist who has agreed to foster a blind girl. After some negotiation, Wendy clears both children to live with Laura.

Laura, portrayed by Sally Hawkins, greets Andy and Piper at her large, slightly disordered house. She immediately lavishes attention on Piper, offering her the bedroom that used to belong to her own daughter, Cathy. Laura refers to a mute boy who lives in the house as her nephew Oliver, and he answers only with gestures. His hair is cut close and there is a pale mark beneath one eye that looks like the birthmark seen on the ritual tape. Laura remarks that Cathy drowned years earlier in the pool out back and that the loss broke her; she also watches old home footage and, privately, she plays grainy Russian tapes showing the ceremony from the opening sequence. The tapes depict a possessed person consuming the flesh of a recently dead body while a second person is murdered in the same manner; the possessed host then vomits the corpse's soul into the newly killed body, reviving it. Laura watches these scenes in her study, eyes fixed on the screen.

Andy settles uneasily into the house. Laura calls him by a wrong name on purpose and corrects herself with a laugh; she favors Piper, doting on her, while appearing cold and sharp with Andy. When they attend Phil's funeral, Laura insists Andy perform certain customs. Inside the chapel, she steals a lock of Phil's hair and later shows Andy the belief that the soul lingers in a corpse by urging him to kiss the body. In a chilling moment, she leans forward and kisses Phil on the lips after suggesting Andy should do the same. Piper asks Andy if their father looks all right; Andy avoids telling her the full truth because of the siblings' private rule of "grapefruit," a childish code meaning they always tell the whole truth.

Laura's home contains other unsettling details. In a padlocked shed she keeps a freezer where she stores Cathy's preserved corpse wrapped in clothing. She leads Piper into that cold space and lets the blind girl touch the frozen remains. Laura dresses Piper in Cathy's clothes and gently encourages Piper to call her "mum," words she clearly craves. At night Laura and Andy drink together; she probes his past and he reveals Phil's abusive treatment toward him and the way Phil favored Piper. Andy admits that he never told Piper about the abuse because he wanted her to keep her happy memories of their father intact. Laura listens and then begins to subtly manipulate Andy, planting seeds that he is unstable and unfit to care for Piper.

Laura's behavior escalates into calculated gaslighting. One night she urinates into a cup and tips it onto Andy's pajama pants while he sleeps, making him believe he has wet the bed. She tampers with his phone and deletes photographs of Oliver and evidence of the house. During an attempted bonding session, Andy offers Oliver slices of rockmelon and asks him to write. Oliver takes the knife Andy used to cut the fruit and begins to chew on the blade, snapping his teeth and slicing his lip. He scrawls the single word "Bird" on a pad of paper before reverting to silence. Andy is shaken and tries to carry Oliver across the circular stone boundary that rings the property and seems to mark its limits; as soon as the boy crosses that line he convulses, his skin blistering and he screams as if in torment. Laura arrives and soothes Oliver by rubbing his head in a ritual circular motion; she ingredients the scene with the tapes, then feeds Oliver the lock of hair she has stolen from Phil's corpse.

Andy starts seeing apparitions of Phil in the house. While attempting to shower--something he has avoided since finding his father--he spots a briefly materialized figure that looks like Phil. The apparition hisses a warning: "She'll die in the rain." Andy slips in his panic, bangs his head and loses consciousness. He wakes in hospital with a concussion.

While Andy is in hospital Laura takes Piper out to play goalball at the local rec center and to buy her new clothes. She also shows Piper Cathy's frozen body in the shed and reassures the girl in ways that deepen the blind child's attachment. Laura's favoritism grows more obvious; she begins to blame Andy for things he did not do. One night, wearing Andy's cologne, Laura sneaks into Piper's room and strikes the sleeping child hard in the face, leaving a black eye. When Piper awakes and cries out, Laura tells her that Andy hit her. The lie convinces Piper to doubt Andy's word in the short term.

Andy, determined to protect Piper, goes to talk to Wendy and at the foster agency he notices a missing person poster bearing the name Connor Bird. The boy in the photograph looks like Laura's "nephew" Oliver. Andy takes the flyer to Wendy and asks her to investigate; she accompanies him back to Laura's property to check on Piper. When Wendy arrives, Laura greets her with a polished performance and appears to be a devoted foster parent. Andy, unable to remain patient, breaks into the padlocked shed and opens the freezer. Inside he finds Cathy's corpse and Oliver hunched over, tearing at the frozen flesh. Wendy witnesses Laura's torn sleeve and the boy's frantic state, and cries out in horror. Before Wendy and Andy can escape with Piper, Laura runs to her parked van, hops in and accelerates straight at them. She drives the vehicle into both of them. The van cleaves through Wendy, killing her instantly where she stands. Andy is struck and thrown, suffering severe injuries. Laura gets out of the van and, in the rain that has begun to fall, drags the groaning Andy to a shallow puddle nearby. She forces his head under the water, holding him down until he stops moving and then lets him go. Andy drowns in the shallow water; he dies while Laura watches.

Laura brings Piper back to the house. Along the way she intercepts a voicemail Andy had left on Piper's phone, in which he professes his love and warns her about Laura. Laura clears the voice message from the phone and continues her preparations for the ritual she has studied on tape. She has been attempting to replicate the sequence exactly: a possessed vessel must consume the corpse of the person whose soul will be transferred, then a second person must be killed by the same means, and finally the possessed host expels the consumed soul and forces it into the newly killed body, bringing that body back to life.

Inside the house Oliver's hunger grows more violent. He begins ripping up furniture, gnawing on wood, and chewing at the flesh of his own arm. He tears into Laura, biting a deep wound in her forearm that bleeds heavily. Later, when the possessed host speaks, its voice is distorted; after he consumes some of Andy's flesh, Oliver briefly mimics Andy's tone to lure Piper. Laura fills the pool with the monsoon rain that pounds on the roof and prepares the scene to mirror Cathy's drowning. She plans to drown Piper at the pool's edge during the storm so the act will match Cathy's death exactly.

Piper grows suspicious; she touches Oliver's head and realizes his hair is short, not the red curly hair Laura had described when trying to pass him off as her nephew. She pads through the house in the storm and stumbles into Andy's bathroom, where she discovers a body on the tiles. She recognizes the metal braces on the teeth and knows instantly it is Andy. She hears Andy's recorded voicemail playing again in the house and becomes more frightened. Piper tries to run but injures herself and loses consciousness.

Laura carries the limp Piper to the pool while Oliver staggers nearby, half-possessed, eyes burning hot. In the rain Laura begins to submerge Piper, pressing the girl's head beneath the water and holding her there, recreating the exact circumstances of Cathy's drowning. Piper fights for breath and scrambles with her arms, fighting Laura's grip. As Piper gasps, she calls out "mum." The single word pierces Laura; for a moment the woman freezes, her expression cracking between fanaticism and grief. She loosens her hold and allows Piper to break free. The blind girl stumbles out of the yard into the rain and runs toward a passing car. A man and woman driving by see her and pull over; they wrap Piper in a blanket and call the police. Piper, shaken and wet, hears a plane engine overhead, remembers something Andy once said about planes and heaven, and smiles faintly.

Outside the circling stone boundary Oliver staggers away. When he crosses the drawn circle and leaves the ring that has surrounded Laura's property, his convulsions stop. He doubles over and vomits until the dark presence that has possessed him is expelled. He collapses gasping, leaving a trail of blood and bile. Officers arrive shortly after the passing motorists call them. Police find Connor--no longer Oliver--lying near the edge of the property. He identifies himself as Connor Bird to the officers, confirming Andy's suspicion that the boy was kidnapped. Connor is weak and wounded but alive.

Inside the house officers find remnants of the ritual, the frozen freezer opened and the torn remains of Cathy. Laura, somewhere between grief and resignation, has pulled Cathy's body from the freezer. She carries the partially consumed corpse out toward the pool and sits on the edge of the water. Blood mixes with the rain as she opens a wound in her own arm, either tearing into it with her fingers or using an object to let the blood flow freely. She cradles Cathy's eaten form in her lap, weeping and murmuring. The police converge and order Laura to drop the corpse; she does not move. Officers approach and find her still holding the remains as the rain washes over them. Laura is dead by the time they reach her, either from the wounds inflicted by Oliver earlier that she has exacerbated herself or from the self-inflicted bleeding she allows to continue; in any case, she is found lifeless beside Cathy's body at the pool.

Emergency responders carry Wendy's body away from the yard; the coroner later lists blunt trauma from being struck by a vehicle as her cause of death. Andy's corpse is taken from the bathroom and identified by the dental braces that Piper touched. Connor is placed into protective custody to recover from his ordeal and is questioned by authorities about where he had been taken. Piper is taken to a hospital to be examined and to reconcile the trauma she has endured. The officers impound Laura's van and catalog the scene: shredded furniture, a freezer door left ajar, bloodstains on the lawn and wooden deck, a stone circle worn into the grass.

After the wreckage is recorded, the police escort the battered Connor from the property. He speaks haltingly, still disconnected from much that happened, and confirms what the tapes showed: a crude ritual intended to bring a dead loved one back by consuming the old body and forcing the soul into a newly killed vessel. The state seizes the scene and interviews witnesses: the couple who rescued Piper, the officers who arrived to secure the area, and neighbors who had watched strange lights and heard screaming during the storm. Piper listens to a closed-circuit recording of Andy's last voicemail where he tells her to run if danger approaches and that he loves her as a brother; she grips the blanket tight and remembers his face.

The final images return to the pool at Laura's house. Police lights flash against the rain. Connor sits on a stretcher, wrapped in a foil blanket and surrounded by detectives. Officers carry away evidence in numbered plastic bags. Cathy's ruined body is taken from Laura's lifeless arms and placed into an evidence bag. The camera lingers on the frozen shed door left open and on the chalk circle embedded in the lawn before cutting to Piper, seated in the back of an ambulance, eyes damp and quiet, listening to a plane rumble high over the storm. She allows a brief smile as the sound passes, and the film closes with the quiet aftermath of the deaths and the house left to the authorities.

The ending of Bring Her Back (2025) shows Laura attempting a dark resurrection ritual to bring back her dead daughter Cathy by using Oliver, who is possessed by a demon named Tari. Laura kills Andy by drowning him and tries to drown Piper to complete the ritual, but at the last moment, she cannot go through with it. Piper escapes, and the police find Laura in the pool clutching Cathy's mutilated corpse, while Oliver (actually a missing boy named Connor) regains consciousness outside the circle of possession.

Expanded narrative of the ending scene by scene:

Andy, recovering in the hospital, returns home to find the situation worsening. Laura, their foster mother, is revealed to have summoned a demon called Tari through an occult ritual learned from a Russian VHS tape. She uses Oliver, a boy possessed by Tari, as a vessel to resurrect her dead daughter Cathy. Oliver is kept under control by a magical blood circle around the property, and outside it, he writhes in pain.

Laura takes Piper to a padlocked shed where Cathy's frozen corpse is stored. She dresses Piper in Cathy's clothes, preparing for the ritual. Laura plans to drown Piper in the pool during a rainstorm to mimic Cathy's death, using Oliver as the vessel to complete the resurrection.

Meanwhile, Oliver becomes increasingly unstable, trashing the house, biting Laura, and consuming inanimate objects and parts of his own body. Andy discovers from the foster agency that Oliver is actually Connor Bird, a missing child. He convinces the caseworker Wendy to investigate, fearing for Piper's safety.

Andy leaves a voicemail warning Piper about Laura and revealing their father's abuse. Laura intercepts the message and cleans the house to deceive Wendy during her visit. However, Wendy notices Laura's bleeding arm, and upon further questioning, Laura hysterically claims she can resurrect Cathy.

Wendy and Andy then discover Oliver eating Cathy's corpse. Laura tries to run them over with her car, killing Wendy instantly. Andy is severely injured and then drowned by Laura in a rain puddle.

When Piper returns home and finds Andy's body, she tries to escape, but Laura overpowers her and drags her to the pool. Oliver, swollen with Cathy's remains, stands ready. Laura begins drowning Piper, but at the last moment, Piper screams "Mom," which causes Laura to hesitate and realize she cannot kill Piper.

Piper escapes and is picked up by her goalball coach, who had come to check on her after seeing her black eye. Later, police find Laura lying in the pool clutching Cathy's mutilated corpse. Connor (Oliver) is found outside the possession circle, crying for help as he regains his senses.

This ending unfolds with intense scenes of supernatural horror, family trauma, and the struggle between life and death, culminating in Laura's failure to complete the resurrection and Piper's escape from the deadly ritual.

Yes, several characters die in the 2025 movie Bring Her Back, and their deaths are central to the plot and ritualistic horror elements of the film.

Here is a list of the characters who die, along with the circumstances of their deaths:

• The father of step-siblings Piper and Andy: He dies at the very beginning of the film from a freak slip-and-fall accident in the shower.

• Wendy, the social worker: She dies when Laura, the foster mother possessed by a demon named Tari, runs her over with a car during a frantic attempt to cover up her occult ritual and prevent interference.

• Andy, Piper's stepbrother: After surviving the car crash that kills Wendy, Andy is severely injured and then drowned by Laura in a rain puddle as part of Laura's effort to complete the resurrection ritual.

• Cathy, Laura's deceased daughter: Although already dead before the film's main events, her corpse is kept in a freezer and used in the occult resurrection ritual Laura is trying to complete.

• Oliver/Connor Bird: A missing child named Connor Bird is possessed by the demon Tari and used as a vessel in the ritual. While Oliver/Connor does not die during the film, he is subjected to possession and horrific transformations, including biting Laura and consuming parts of his own body.

• Piper: Laura attempts to kill Piper by drowning her in the swimming pool--the same way Cathy died--to complete the ritual. However, Piper survives after calling Laura "Mommy," which causes Laura to relent and release her.

In summary, the confirmed deaths are the father (accidental), Wendy (car accident caused by Laura), Andy (drowned by Laura), and Cathy (pre-existing death). Piper narrowly escapes death at the end. The deaths are tied closely to Laura's desperate and violent attempts to resurrect her dead daughter through a dark occult ritual involving possession and murder.

The movie Bring Her Back (2025) does not have a post-credits scene. The film ends with its final shot and then transitions directly into the credits without any additional footage or bonus content during or after the credits.

The ritual involves feeding the corpse of the person to be resurrected to a possessed host. In this case, Oliver, who is possessed by a demon named Tari, eats pieces of Cathy's corpse. The ritual requires the host to regurgitate the corpse and its lingering soul into a newly dead body of a person killed in the same manner as the one to be resurrected. Laura intends to use Piper as this vessel by drowning her in the pool to mimic Cathy's death.

Laura uses blood and magic circles to supernaturally control the zombified Oliver. One such circle surrounds her entire property, and if Oliver is pulled outside this circle, he writhes and screams in pain.

The VHS tape shows a resurrection ritual that Laura learns from. It depicts a zombie-like individual devouring a corpse and then vomiting its contents into another person's face and mouth. This ritual is central to Laura's plan to resurrect Cathy.

When Andy and Wendy confront Laura, she runs them over with her car. Wendy dies instantly, and Andy is severely injured. Laura then drowns Andy in a puddle in her driveway.

Laura stops the ritual at the last moment because Piper calls out 'Mom!' while Laura is trying to drown her in the pool. This seems to awaken some level of remorse in Laura, causing her to hesitate and ultimately spare Piper's life.

The movie "Bring Her Back" (2025) is rated R and is not family friendly. It contains strong disturbing and bloody violent content, graphic nudity, underage drinking, and strong language, making it unsuitable for children or sensitive viewers.

Potentially objectionable or upsetting scenes include: - Strong, disturbing, and bloody violence, including a boy biting a sharp knife with visible blood and tissue, biting a woman's arm, and biting his own arm with blood and tissue seen. - Grisly images related to a ritual that appears to bring people back from the dead, including people consuming dead bodies. - Scenes of a person being struck by a car and killed, and a person being drowned in a puddle and in a swimming pool. - Discussions of child abuse and foster care, with children placed in harrowing jeopardy and exposed to violence and neglect. - Full non-sexual male nudity and some partial non-sexual nudity. - At least 16 uses of the F-word and other strong language. - Themes of grief, madness, and abuse on a harrowing scale, with unsettling and unhinged characters.

The film's intense and graphic content, including violence against children and disturbing supernatural elements, makes it very hard to watch and inappropriate for younger or sensitive audiences.