2025
On Why I Did Not Watch Bring Her Back; Or, if there is a navel in which to gaze, I will plumb its goddamn depths. (Sorry about it, Leila!)
I’ve been having a stupid amount of anxiety about whether or not to watch a movie. Not life-altering anxiety, not “keeps me up at night” anxiety, but a persistent, gnawing discomfort that feels wildly disproportionate to the actual stakes. It’s a horror film. I could watch it, or I could not watch it. That should be the end of the decision. Except there’s this nasty little edgelord gatekeeper who lives somewhere deep in my heart, and he’s been working working real hard to make me feel like shit, insisting that real horror fans don’t get to be squeamish, that there are no safe words when it comes to the genre, that opting out means I’m a fraud.
The movie is Bring Her Back, the follow-up to Talk to Me by the Philippou brothers. It’s a grief story wrapped in a resurrection ritual with demons and possession and traumatized foster children caught in the middle. Sally Hawkins gives a performance that’s apparently devastating. I read the plot synopsis on Wikipedia, thinking maybe knowing what happens would make it easier to watch. It confirmed my instinct to pass. The thing is, if this were just schlock, I could dismiss it easily. But people whose opinions I respect are saying it’s great, emotionally resonant, beautifully crafted. That it earns its horror. And somehow that makes it worse, because skipping a well-crafted, emotionally intelligent horror film feels like admitting I can’t handle what the genre is capable of at its best. Like I only want horror when it’s safely in the realm of fantasy, when it’s vampires and monsters and things that don’t exist. Not when it’s about the actual horrors people inflict on each other, especially on children.
I’ve spent years forcing myself to watch things because I thought that’s what being a serious horror fan required. I sat through films that left me feeling wrung raw and emotionally eviscerated (Martyrs, Irreversible, A Serbian Film, Funny Games, etc.) because I didn’t want to seem fragile or squeamish. I pushed through content that made me miserable because I was afraid of being dismissed as someone who couldn’t handle it. And maybe some of that was useful, expanding my tolerance and understanding of what horror can do. But a lot of it was just needless punishment, this idea that suffering through something proves your dedication to the genre. Like horror fandom is a test of endurance rather than a love of storytelling. But I’ve gotten tired of treating horror like something I have to survive. Somewhere along the way I forgot I’m supposed to actually enjoy this, and I don’t want my horror to feel punitive anymore. As a friend observed on Facebook, “we don’t have to continually poke the tender spots.” Amen.
There’s probably something gendered in this anxiety too. Women in horror spaces often feel like we have to prove we can handle anything, that we’re not “too sensitive” or easily shocked. We can’t be the ones who look away or cover our eyes or admit that something was too much. That confirms every stereotype about women being weak or unsuited for the genre. So we perform toughness, we laugh at things that aren’t funny, we act unbothered when we’re very much bothered. And maybe I’ve been doing that for so long that I’ve forgotten it’s okay to just… not.
I write about horror publicly. On my blog, in my reviews (whether what I am reviewing is horror-related or not!), and I even have a little column in a horror magazine now. I’ve built some kind of authority, however teeny tiny, on my ability to engage with the genre thoughtfully. And there’s this fear that admitting I won’t watch something undermines that authority. Like, I lose credibility, like people will question whether I’m qualified to write about horror if I’m picking and choosing what I can handle. But that’s the edgelord talking again, insisting that real expertise means consuming everything indiscriminately, that boundaries are weakness. And you may be tempted to say “Sarah, it’s not that deep,” to which I would invite you to fuck off because I hate it when people say that. It is that deep. It is always that deep.
So I’m not watching Bring Her Back, at least not right now. Not during October when I’m already watching or reading or listening to something horror-related every single day and writing about it immediately afterward. As someone who’s more of a reader than a movie watcher, this much screen time is exhausting. And I’m already doing so much in general in terms of blogs, reviews, magazine columns, books (in additon to my day job I’ve had for twenty years, which is a fraught situation unto itself because there’s a TBD expiration date on it); work that never feels like enough, no matter how much I produce. I can’t feel okay without creating, but oftentimes creating doesn’t actually make me feel okay either. It’s an impossible trap.
Maybe that’s what this anxiety is actually about. My mother and grandparents used to call me lazy and lackadaisical. They’re all dead now. They never saw any of the things I’ve accomplished, and they won’t see what I accomplish next. But I’m still trying to prove them wrong anyway, still measuring myself against voices that can’t hear me anymore. I will apparently be proving myself to the dead until I myself am dead. Maybe that gatekeeper living in my chest isn’t really about horror fandom at all. Maybe he’s just an echo of something older and even more devastating, a voice insisting that no matter what I accomplish, I’m still fundamentally shiftless, useless, and worthless.
Maybe I’ll watch this film eventually, or maybe I won’t. But for now, I’m giving myself permission to say not this one, not today!
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Emma says
Hooray. Leave it be if you don’t want to see it it’s no one’s business (and you don’t owe anyone an explanation as to why you are not watching it). Writing genuinely about genuine feelings is what makes your writing fantastic
S. Elizabeth says
I struggle a lot with that too, about not owing anyone an explanation! You articulated a major problem I have with my own writing sometimes...like why are you even bothering to mention it, it's no one's business! I think I am just always preemptively defensive about stuff that people are never going to give me a problem about in the first place. It's sort of like those arguments you have with imaginary people in your head, things that no one would ever say (probably) (hopefully) and then you get yourself worked up and mad and upset for no real reason at all!
Anthony says
Ditto what Emma said, and you've eloquently stated why you will not watch the film now, nor owe anyone an explanation. But, Finger's Crossed writing about it helped wrangle anxieties. However, for me your next to last paragraph hit me a bit in the feels...
"My mother and grandparents used to call me lazy and lackadaisical. They’re all dead now. They never saw any of the things I’ve accomplished, and they won’t see what I accomplish next. But I’m still trying to prove them wrong anyway, still measuring myself against voices that can’t hear me anymore. I will apparently be proving myself to the dead until I myself am dead.... Maybe he’s just an echo of something older and even more devastating, a voice insisting that no matter what I accomplish, I’m still fundamentally shiftless, useless, and worthless..."
I have had my accomplishments, published, award winning independent scholar, former conference organizer. But it feels as if my family never recognized it, as I never finished college. When it was time for me to goto college they rather I have signed up for the US Navy. They proceeded to send my younger brothers, and adopted older brother off to college.
Yet, I worked to accomplish my small achievements, sending them copies of my work, never hearing a word-- I would have rather heard a critique than nothing.
Thank you for sharing this post, and a bit about your own anxieties as I can see a bit more clearly on my own.
I am new to your work, and glad I found you.
Andi says
Some years ago, I made a decision that I don’t need to traumatize myself for the sake of entertainment.
I do love the horror genre overall, but I am just too exhausted and drained by the real world to subject myself to things that I’m not enjoying, particularly in regards to “man’s inhumanity to man.”
I chose not to watch this film for the same reason, and I don’t feel like I need to defend that choice. I’m sure it’s very well done, and I also don’t need those images living behind my eyes.
I’m glad that you’re not giving into your inner edgelord, and focusing on watching and reading things that actually give you pleasure :)
Also, lazy, shiftless people don’t publish multiple books!!!
Frejdis says
This was such a good, much needed post. I often struggle with this too, even as a lifelong horror fan. And a (probably also lifelong) recoverer from feelings of inferiority masquerading as toughness or imperviousness. I used to treat the genre as endurance watching too, until one day I heard a female friend say, half-jokingly that she was "so bad at watching horror, I get way too scared!" and I told her I believe the whole point of movies is that we are supposed to feel something, and that edgelord men and pick me girls in their gatekeepy online pseudo-subcultures should not let her believe that makes her inferior. And I guess as I articulated that, I could feel how I needed to say it to myself too. Heh, one of the rare upsides to NOT thinking before I speak! Later on I delved more into the history of horror and film and can now relax squarely in the knowledge that women invented basically everything about the horror genre anyway (and often they still do!), as life is damn scary, especially so if you're a woman, and the point of it was definitely never that men should have yet another reason to sit around and pretend a pathological lack of human empathy somehow makes them cooler. I am so over that by now! Anyway, thanks again for a great post, I relate so much to the experiences and feelings you describe here. Thank you for bringing up a weirdly unpopular topic in an honest and thoughtful way. I always enjoy these kinds of posts :)
Minna says
As always, you articulate a thing that I have been trying to pinpoint within myself with eloquent accuracy. I don't try to actively shy away from "difficult" horror, but as living life and living life in *this particular* dark timeline has given me real life horror with which to contend, I am finding myself leaning more into escapist entertainments rather than emotional/spiritual/gustatorial endurance fests. I'm also becoming a real big fan of just walking away if XYZ isn't serving me. I appreciate that even when you don't watch the thing, you find something that resonates in its void.