Review: Talk to Me

Directors:  Danny Philippou, Michael Philippou

Stars:  Sophie Wilde, Zoe Terakes, Alexandra Jensen

A rare but welcome example of a non-American indie horror movie taking up residence in mainstream multiplexes (thanks in part, one suspects, to its stateside distribution via A24), Talk to Me is the product of Australian rising-star YouTubers Michael and Danny Philippou, who are out to ruin your day. What looks like a nominal twist on the seance/possession movie is actually multiple different things. A shoegazing rumination on grief. On addiction. On peer pressure. And one of the most outright traumatic and bleak imaginings of the afterlife to have shivered onto our screens in quite some time.

Bracingly putting the Down in Down Under, Talk to Me introduces us to Mia (Sophie Wilde), a young woman thinking of her mother on the 2 year anniversary of her evident suicide. Mia still wrestles with and rejects this possibility, determined that her mum wouldn’t leave her – and hurt her – intentionally. She has been all but adopted by the family of her best friend Jade (Alexandra Jensen), but the discovery of a craze on campus that has gone viral draws Mia’s attention for all the wrong reasons.

Hayley (Zoe Terakes) and Joss (Chris Alosio) have come into possession (no pun intended) of a severed and mummified hand cast in ceramics. Believed to have once been the hand of a spirit medium, the duo host parties where their intrepid friends use this totem to contact the dead, ushering them in with the titular phrase, “Talk to me”. Mia wants in.

The ceremony involved in contacting the supernatural world parallels the paraphernalia of a heroin user getting their fix. A naked flame is a prerequisite to open proceedings. Users are belted to a chair in a direct visual simile to a junkie tying an arm to ready a vein. And then there’s the euphoric, body altering experience when the moment ‘hits’ and the vessel – the human body – is intoxicated by the incoming spirit. Eyes dilate wildly as if from an opioid fix, but also as if something previously half-empty has been filled.

Inevitably, Mia becomes addicted to the experience. This – in tandem with the spirit of young people goading each other into doing The Scary Thing – only escalates the potential for danger, which strikes when their collective high obscures the red flags around a tremendously bad decision.

Talk to Me works so much better than many of it’s staid and typical American brethren for a few reasons. Firstly, it’s a character piece. While some way from revelatory, time spent in the company of Mia, Jade and Jade’s younger brother Riley (Joe Bird) yields our investment in them. Even their pally interactions with orbiting matriarch Sue (Miranda Otto) are valuable. And, though more limited in terms of screen time, both Terakes and Alosio prove adept young character actors. We can feel quickly who Hayley and Joss are; representative also of the cocksure immortality of youth that’s soon to be resoundingly tested. At its core this is a coming-of-ager about confronting the reality of death.

The other key reason, up front, is its structure and diligence. Largely jump-scare averse, Talk to Me takes its time establishing rules and behaviours, before escalating and condensing, breaking into a sprint only as it rushes toward its dark ending. The final descent can feel distressing, with expected handholds removed and uncertainty factored into the experience.

Wilde’s central turn is rich, layered and varied as she takes on both Mia and the array of nasty spirits waiting to take ownership of her body. It’s a career-maker and the central point around which the rest of Talk to Me spins. Emma Bortignon’s sound team, meanwhile, have created quite the skin-crawling mixture; one that all but demands chasing this one down in a cinema to experience it’s full sensory range. Chatters coming from far corners give the film a 3D feel and heighten its ability to frighten in the dark enclosure of a theatre. If your interest is piqued, this is how you should see the movie.

Talk to Me is full-throated. It is out to scare and has the means to do so. The lore surrounding the ceramic hand is perfectly vague, allowing it to retain a sense of magic and mystery, while the spectral entities that haunt the film recall the wet and aged monstrosities that stalked Maika Monroe in David Robert Mitchell’s cult fave It Follows. The Philippou boys take a leaf out of Ari Aster’s playbook, also. Hiding grotesques in plain sight and then, when revealed to us, refusing to cut away. Talk to Me gets awfully bloody and tactile.

In the rush to the end, some elements jar. As effective as one moment is (I was left with my mouth agape, even as the particular payoff was long telegraphed) the downward spiral leaves little time to process major events. Considering the shape of the film, this may well be intentional. A deliberate piling up of traumas. And Talk to Me does feel commendably traumatic, not least in its incredibly bleak conclusion which dares to turn the tables on our perspective before smartly snuffing out the candle.

It leaves us with no reassurances, and the possibility of a sleepless night. An effective use of the medium to make a terror machine.