Sally Hawkins makes kindness convincing enough to catch us off guard. Her attention to speech and movement serves intimate dramas and family films, but Bring Her Back finds something frightening in the same apparently unforced warmth.
Fi1m perspective
In Bring Her Back (2025), Sally Hawkins offers tea, hugs and drinks to children who should not be drinking. Her foster mother, Laura, talks constantly and laughs at her own jokes, yet never seems to stop watching. There is no ominous pause to warn us, no sudden chill in the delivery. We found ourselves half-believing her because Hawkins makes the concern in her voice so persuasive. She lets us see why someone might trust this woman, which is what makes the performance frightening.
Her first major film role came with Mike Leigh’s All or Nothing (2002), followed by Susan Wells in Vera Drake (2004) and the lead, Poppy, in Happy-Go-Lucky (2008). Leigh develops characters through extended improvisation and rehearsal, a method suited to her closely observed performances. That preparation helps explain why she can appear so open without seeming to demonstrate a feeling for our benefit. Vera Drake earns our recommendation through Imelda Staunton and the patient family scenes, though Leigh is too protective of Vera’s goodness.
That work does not confine her to talkative characters or intimate British drama. In Guillermo del Toro’s The Shape of Water (2017), her mute lead, Elisa Esposito, depends on physical expression to convey an inner life. The move to family films, including Mary Brown in Paddington 2 (2017), puts her emotional openness to another use.
The Philippou brothers put that openness to a harsher use in Bring Her Back, and Hawkins is the reason we recommend it to horror viewers. Laura greets Piper like a returning relative and Andy like a lodger, a difference that makes the welcome uncomfortable without requiring an obvious display of menace. The film explains itself more than it needs to, and the performance makes that excess particularly noticeable. Hawkins has already made us wary through Laura’s constant attention and her easy affection; spelling things out cannot improve on that. Try it for her, provided a grim evening is what you had in mind.
Biography
Sally Hawkins is an English actress. Born on 27 April 1976 in London, she graduated from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and began her career in stage productions including Shakespeare plays before appearing in film.
Her film roles include Mary Brown in Paddington (2014) and Paddington 2 (2017), Elisa Esposito in The Shape of Water (2017), and Laura in Bring Her Back (2025). She has also appeared in Blue Jasmine (2013), Godzilla (2014) and Wonka (2023). Hawkins won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy for Happy-Go-Lucky (2008) and received Academy Award nominations for Best Supporting Actress and Best Actress.
