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Talk To Me Review
Image Credit: A24 Films
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Cast:
* Sophie Wilde as Mia
* Alexandra Jensen as Jade
* Joe Bird as Riley
* Otis Dhanji as Daniel
* Miranda Otto as Sue
* Zoey Terakes as Hayley
* Chris Alosio as Joss
* Marcus Johnson as Max
* Alexandria Steffensen as Rhea
* Ari McCarthy as Cole
* Sunny Johnson as Duckett
Story: When a group of friends discover how to conjure spirits using an embalmed hand, they become hooked on the new thrill, until one of them goes too far and unleashes terrifying supernatural forces.
Sometimes the best horror movies are allegories for something else. Godzilla was a direct response to the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Hereditary was about grief. Nightbreed is clearly a queer-coded movie about coming out of the closet. Horror is arguably at its best when it takes something that’s causing fear in the real world and takes a good look at it through monsters, ghosts or whatever else. We even saw this last year with Smile, a fantastic ghost movie that looked at trauma and paranoia.
The latest in these, whether intentional or not (and I’d find it hard to believe it wasn’t) is Talk to Me. This is an Australian horror film from A24 that definitely seems to be about addiction. It follows a group of teens that figure out a way to contact the dead with a hand of glory. They give some vague explanation about why it’s able to do what it does, but they have no interest in the whys because of what it does. It allows them to talk to the dead and even let the dead possess them, as long as they touch the hand.
They comment in the film what a rush it gives them, and you can see everyone want to use it more and more. This becomes more prominent with Sophie Wilde’s Mia, who may have held it too long the first time and begins to look for more reasons to use it, even when she probably shouldn’t. If directors Danny and Michael Philippou, as well as Danny’s co-writer Bill Hinzman didn’t intend this to be an allegory for drug addiction, I would be shocked.
But even if you ignore all of that, and it’s easy to because the film doesn’t hit you over the head with it, is Talk to Me an effective horror film?
Yes, of course. There aren’t any massive jump scares (although that term has been severely misused by the general public) but instead it has a lot of creepy and intense moments. It just feels like something is off, presumably as it would if you are contacting the dead. There are plenty of scary moments, but the great part is that the movie just lets them happen. Something will appear on screen without any musical accompaniment, which makes it better. The Philippous know how to craft a creepy, atmospheric horror film that leads to the audience jumping at shadows.
The movie benefits from a likeable cast, particularly Wilde, Alexandra Jensen and Joe Bird. They are established early on as a chosen family unit and their chemistry as such shines on. It makes it all the more tragic that the events play out the way they do, because these are just normal, easy-going kids that are dealing with way more than they should be.
Yes, as you can imagine from a movie about kids addicted to the dead, this is a fairly bleak sit. Without spoiling anything, this movie’s take on what happens to you when you die is not a good one and it makes the dead as something you don’t want to mess with. That gives an extra layer of suspense to every time the hand is used. As for the easy question, “why don’t they just get rid of it?” The answer is simple: they’re addicted and keep finding reasons. And each time, things get worse.
This is hardly the first film to use the idea that the dead aren’t exactly fond of the living. Ghost movies wouldn’t be a thing if it was. Even more recently, Insidious had the idea that the dead are jealous of the living and want what we have. This seems to take it a step further. In this movie, it appears as though the dead actively hate us. And you do eventually find out why. It’s startling.
This movie also isn’t afraid to get weird, which is something more mainstream horror needs to do. There are multiple ways to get under people’s skin and sometimes you have to go for the gross-out to do that. This understands that. Is it gross? Yes. Is it uncomfortable? Also yes. Is it darkly comedic at the same time? You bet. It is multiple things at once and the directors do a fantastic balancing act.
Talk to Me is definitely one of the best horror movies of the year so far. It’s creepy, it’s bizarre and it’s dark. It’ll have you feeling some kind of way after you leave the theater, and it stuck with me after I got home. A24 definitely has an eye for talent and I’m already anxious to see what the directors of this one are going to do next.
