When the Title Is Also a Threat
If you’ve ever wondered what it would look like if The Sixth Sense, Pet Sematary, and a Lifetime infidelity drama were tossed into a blender and poured onto a VHS tape from 1999, Come Back to Me is your answer. Paul Leyden’s 2014 psychological horror film has a decent premise buried somewhere deep beneath its absurdity—unfortunately, it never quite claws its way out of the shallow grave it digs for itself.
The title says Come Back to Me, but after sitting through ninety minutes of this confused resurrection soap opera, you’ll be screaming stay gone.
The Plot: A Thousand Deaths, None of Them Good
The movie begins with a flashback to a young boy named Dale watching his father kill his mother. It’s the kind of traumatic event that, in any other horror film, would result in a lifelong fascination with taxidermy and a hobby involving graveyards. Here, it just sets the stage for the weirdest superpower ever: murder and resurrection by convenience.
Fast forward to the present, and Dale (now played by Nathan Keyes) has grown up into the creepiest boy-next-door since Norman Bates started a bed-and-breakfast. He moves in across the street from Sarah (Katie Walder) and Josh (Matt Passmore), a picture-perfect suburban couple living in Las Vegas—which, incidentally, is already a city filled with the undead, just not the reanimated-by-science kind.
Sarah is a grad student studying pornography (which, in this script, is treated like she’s researching nuclear fission), while Josh is a croupier with a personality so beige it could be used to paint drywall. Things go south fast when Sarah begins experiencing blackouts, nightmares, and other symptoms typically associated with bad tequila and even worse screenwriting.
Then she discovers she’s pregnant, which is impressive since Josh is sterile. This should have been her first clue that something is off, but Sarah’s response is more along the lines of “huh, that’s odd” than “call an exorcist.”
Eventually, she installs security cameras and discovers the shocking truth: her polite neighbor Dale has been sneaking into her house, killing her, raping her corpse, and bringing her back to life with zero memory of the events. That’s right—necrophilia and resurrection, all in one plot twist. It’s as if the film looked at the boundaries of good taste and said, “Let’s sprint right past those.”
The Tone: Lifetime Movie Meets Lovecraft Fanfic
Come Back to Me tries very hard to be a serious psychological thriller. Unfortunately, it’s about as subtle as a ghost jumping out of a closet wearing a name tag that says “BOO.” The tone swings wildly between melodrama, crime procedural, and supernatural horror, never committing to any of them long enough to make sense.
The film wants to explore deep themes like trauma, morality, and the blurred line between life and death—but it also wants to show Nathan Keyes glowering in soft focus like he’s auditioning for a boy band called Necromance.
Every scene is scored like a commercial for discount anxiety medication, and the dialogue sounds like it was translated into English by a Ouija board. Sarah’s friends, doctors, and husband all deliver their lines with the enthusiasm of people who realized halfway through filming that the catering budget was better than the script.
The Characters: Brains Not Included
Let’s start with Sarah, our heroine. She’s written as a capable, educated woman but spends most of the movie gasping, fainting, and ignoring obvious red flags. She’s the kind of horror protagonist who, upon finding a bloody hammer in her laundry, decides the most rational course of action is to… take a nap.
Josh, her husband, exists primarily to be unsupportive and later to die inconveniently. He’s the emotional equivalent of a parking cone. When Sarah becomes mysteriously pregnant, his response isn’t “Let’s call the police,” but “You must be sleepwalking.” To be fair, if I were trapped in this script, I’d probably try to sleep through it too.
Then there’s Dale, the undead Energizer Bunny of serial killers. Nathan Keyes plays him with a blank intensity that’s supposed to be unsettling but mostly looks like he’s trying to remember his next line. His power to resurrect the dead is never explained—it just… exists, like a bad Wi-Fi connection that occasionally brings people back to life.
And poor Eileen, Dale’s mother, gets the thankless role of the exposition machine. Institutionalized and terrified, she exists solely to dump backstory like a haunted Wikipedia entry.
The Horror: Resurrection Fatigue
On paper, a killer who can resurrect his victims is a great premise for existential horror. In execution, it’s about as scary as a malfunctioning Roomba. Once Sarah dies and comes back to life for the third or fourth time, the film’s stakes flatline. When death is reversible, terror becomes tedious.
Instead of suspense, we get repetition: Dale kills, Sarah wakes up confused, and the audience sighs in resignation. The film tries to compensate by leaning into shock value—sexual assault, baby horror, gore—but it all feels exploitative rather than frightening.
By the time Sarah shoots her husband in a tragic misunderstanding, the movie’s grimness has curdled into unintentional comedy. Watching her scream “Come back to me!” over a man she killed feels less like a tragedy and more like an outtake from Days of Our Undead Lives.
The Logic: None Detected
If you try to apply logic to Come Back to Me, you’ll need resuscitation too. Dale’s powers are never defined—can he resurrect anyone? Does it require love, or is it just a fun party trick? Why does no one notice the smell of corpses and formaldehyde wafting through suburbia?
And the timeline? Let’s just say time and continuity die early and never get revived. At one point, Sarah’s friend Leslie gives birth to a baby that’s apparently Dale’s clone spawn. Whether that’s meant to set up a sequel or just a lawsuit from the Department of Health remains unclear.
The ending, in which Dale dies and all his resurrected victims collapse simultaneously, is supposed to be tragic. Instead, it feels like the film itself finally gave up the ghost.
The Humor: You Have to Laugh or You’ll Cry
To the film’s credit, it’s impossible not to find humor in its sheer absurdity. The concept of a polite suburban necromancer sneaking into houses to commit murder-resurrection cycles is so bizarre it borders on parody.
Imagine Rear Window meets Re-Animator, but written by someone who thinks “night terrors” is a valid plot device for everything. The scenes where Sarah films herself for “research” look like deleted footage from Paranormal Activity: HOA Edition.
Even the serious moments have an accidental comedic brilliance. When Sarah’s doctor explains that her “missing scar” might just be a stress symptom, you can almost hear the script begging you not to ask questions.
The Message: Don’t Clone This Movie
By the end, it’s clear Come Back to Me wants to be a meditation on trauma and violation—a modern fable about playing God and losing humanity. Instead, it becomes a Frankenstein’s monster of bad pacing, worse dialogue, and emotional incoherence.
The film resurrects itself scene after scene, but much like its victims, it never comes back right.
Final Thoughts: Return to Sender
Come Back to Me has all the ingredients for a smart horror thriller: psychological tension, moral complexity, and a killer premise. Unfortunately, it mixes them with all the finesse of a toddler making soup out of dirt and crayons.
It’s not scary, it’s not profound, and by the end, it’s barely alive. The only true horror is realizing there’s still twenty minutes left.
Verdict: 1.5 out of 5 Unholy Fetuses.
If you’re looking for an existential horror masterpiece, go watch The Others. If you’re looking for something to laugh at while you question the limits of cinematic resurrection, Come Back to Me will at least grant you that wish—again and again and again.
