Talk to Me is the latest horror film to arrive in town riding a wave of fan hype after a tour of the festival circuit and in this case, at least some of it is warranted. It has a reasonably compelling initial premise, a strong star performance from relative newcomer Sophie Wilde, a couple of memorably gruesome and disturbing moments and the whole thing has been put together in a reasonably stylish manner by Danny and Michael Philippou, the Australian twin brothers making their feature writing/directing debuts here. That alone is enough to put it above such recent genre misfires as The Boogey Man and Insidious: The Red Door. And yet, it never quite makes the final leap to something truly unusual and genuinely creepy that it seems poised to make throughout and as a result, I felt more of a sense of frustration than fright when it was all over.
Our heroine is Mia (Sophie Wilde), a teenaged girl who is still reeling from the recent and seemingly ambiguous suicide of her mother and, unable to move on and alienated from her father, Max (Marcus Johnson), finds herself spending nearly all of her time hanging out at the home of her best friend, Jade (Alexandra Jensen), and inserting herself into the family dynamic that includes Jade’s mother (Miranda Otto) and younger brother Riley (Joe Bird). One night, Mia and Jade sneak out to a party where they learn about a new craze that is all the rage among their classmates. One of them has acquired what is alleged to be an actual severed hand that has been encased in ceramics and which purports to contain paranormal powers. If you take hold of the hand and say “Talk to me,” the spirit of a dead person will supposedly appear in front of you and, upon invitation, will enter your consciousness and potentially do wild things, all of which are captured by other participants on their phones and posted for all to see. The one hitch—if the connection is not severed in 90 seconds, the spirit could end up staying in you forever and, as demonstrated in the opening sequence featuring other unlucky participants, you do not want that to happen.
At first, Mia naturally assumes that this is all a load of horseshit but when she tries it herself and ends up getting briefly possessed, she pretty much becomes obsessed with the whole thing and wants to keep on doing it, much to the consternation of Jade, the curiosity of Riley and the obliviousness of the parents, who are inevitably clueless as to what their kids are up to. It is all fun and games for a little while but things take a decided turn one night when Mia and and her friends bust out the hand for another round of possessions and one of the spirits that turns up is none other than that of Mia’s late mother, who appears to be trying to impart some information regarding her death. Unfortunately, this spirit is possessing someone else at the time and in her desperation to get more information, Mia allows the 90-second barrier to be broken, which results in a catastrophic incident that not only fills her with an additional level of guilt to go along with her feelings regarding her mother but which also seems to have unleashed malevolent spirits who will not rest until they destroy her.
What the Philippous have created here, of course, is essentially a take on the classic W. W. Jacobs short story “The Monkey’s Paw” that has been rejiggered for the Tik-Tok generation and for a little while at least, it isn’t too bad. The notion of kids willingly allow themselves to be possessed by the spirits of the dead for a few kicks and the possibility of a viral video may sound a bit silly but as a paranormal stand-in for all the stupid shit that young people will get into—usually involving a combination of alcohol, drugs and bad judgement—thanks to a combination of peer pressure and their youthful sense of invulnerability, it gets the job done. The Philippous move their story along in an efficient and often visually stylish manner while also generating some moments of genuine tension and shock, especially in the early going when we are first exposed to the hand and its apparent power. The film also benefits greatly from the performance by Wilde, who does a good job of conveying her guilt regarding her mother and the events of that fateful party, her terror at the spirits she is now convinced are everywhere and her determination to make things right, no matter what the cost. If your interest in the film is based primarily on the level of gore involved, rest assured that there are a couple of extremely grisly and potentially stomach-churning moments that
The film is reasonably engrossing in its opening scenes up through the disastrous party but after that, the Philippous start to lose control of things. The initially intriguing narrative soon devolves into an amalgamation of elements from such recent films as the genuinely brilliant It Follows and the less-than-brilliant Smile that gives it an all-too-familiar feel after a while. This is especially evident during the climax—while it ends on a reasonably effective moment, the build-up to it is too convoluted and leaves you pondering the mechanics instead of being consumed with fear. The film is also yet another entry in the recent spate of fright films (such as the aforementioned The Boogey Man and Insidious: The Red Door) in which the horrific elements serve as overly on-the-nose metaphors for people struggling to process and move on from past traumas but doesn’t really bring anything new to the table in that regard. And while I am going to assume that this was not the intention of the Philippous, the fact that all the troubles that transpire in the film are largely the fault of the only two significant Black characters—Mia and her insistence on keeping the person possessed by her mom past the 90-second moment and the classmate who brought in the hand and introduced the other to it in the first place—adds a racial element to the proceedings that, while perhaps inadvertent, does come across as a little disconcerting.
For these reasons, I cannot recommend Talk to Me but at the same time, I don’t want to dismiss it completely. Like I said, it has been made with some undeniable skill and has elements that do work. The trouble is that it just more things that don’t and the accumulation as things go on eventually work against the film as a whole. In the end, this proves to be little more than an exercise on the part of the Philippou brothers to demonstrate that they could indeed write and direct a feature film. Now that they have shown that they can accomplish that, the next step is to show that they can make a good one.