Talk to Me: Supernatural Thriller's Firm Grip is Hard to Shake
By Thom Ernst
Rating: A-
What a year it is for horror movies with the release of Evil Dead Rise, Cocaine Bear, The Wrath of Becky, Infinity Pool, and Influencer all crammed into the first six (OK, seven) months of 2023. You can toss in M3GAN and The Blackening even if you do think they fall far short of their reputation.
And who needs to feign curiosity about the upcoming Exorcist reboot, The Exorcist: Believer or the Ben Wheatley directed Meg 2: The Trench? Not me.
We can now add Talk to Me to the list, the debut film from Australian brothers Michael and Danny Philippou. The success of Talk to Me is something of a shaggy dog story that sees the Philippou brothers rise from YouTube fame to Sundance Festival darlings.
Sophie Wilde talks to the demonic hand in Talk to Me
Talk to Me features a ceramic hand—a conduit to the spirit world, scrawled with warnings and signatures like the bathroom wall of a severely tagged punk-bar. The movie takes a leap of faith accepting the hand as a tool in a parlour game with the ability to connect to lost souls.
There is no room for disbelief. Either you’re in for the ride or you’re not—and if you’re not, then step out of the way because Talk to Me will steamroll over any doubters.
The hand lands in the possession—a word not to be taken lightly in this case—of a group of teenagers. It’s like a nifty new sensory device that’s passed around from individual to individual. The volunteer grips the hand, thought to encase the severed hand of an occultist or medium, lights a candle and invites the dead to possess them for a whopping 90 seconds—beyond the allotted time could result in serious ramifications.
Credit goes to the Philippou brothers for their originality and perfectly queasily executed bits of ghoulish anarchy.
Playfulness among the characters, both those gathered to witness and those elected to participate, steels the viewers for something unsettling, which the filmmakers are happy to deliver. There is humour in the film, staggered throughout, that remains organic even while not necessarily seeming intentional.
Highlighting the film’s success is Sophie Wilde, who is garnering well-earned praise as Mia, a young woman longing to reconnect with her deceased mother, if only to confirm that her death was accidental. Wilde’s performance is close to acrobatic, balancing a concealed grief beneath the persona of someone straining to live a life of hope.
The supporting cast is no less impressive, outweighed only by Wilde’s screen time and the importance of Mia’s story to the film. Joe Bird, the youngest of the cast members has less screen-time, but is no less active or essential. Bird plays Riley, the younger brother of Mia’s friend, Jade (Alexandra Jensen). Against Jades’ authority, Mia allows Riley to take a turn with the hand and, in an act of rare selfishness, allows his possession to overstay the allotted time. Nothing good becomes of it.
Talk to Me is an original entry into the possession game squeezed between the ruling reign of films like Evil Dead Rises released earlier this year, and the October release of Exorcist: Believer.
Before becoming aware of the filmmaker’s YouTube origins and the fact that Talk to Me is their debut film, I wrongly assumed a creative link to the 2014 sleeper hit, It Follows, an independent film also shaped by a narrative around a possessive, singularly focussed spirit. But despite any overall similarities in mood of that film, Talk to Me remains very much an entity on its own.
Horror fans are not likely to be disappointed.
Talk to Me is directed by Michael and Danny Philippou and stars Sophie Wilde, Alexandra Jensen, and Joe Bird. Talk to Me is currently available at select theatres.