In recent years, the horror genre has felt just like a Jamie Lee Curtis press tour: nothing but trauma. Of course there are exceptions, but increasingly so, horror films – such as The Babadook, Hereditary and Smile – have become obsessed with weaving themes of mental health throughout their narratives. However, not all attempts have been received just as well, and the subsequent oversaturation within the genre has left some exhausted by this now common pairing. The trend doesn’t seem to be going anywhere either as Talk to Me, a new Australian horror film, is the latest to try its hand at combining the two.
Directed by twin brother YouTube stars Danny and Michael Philippou, the film follows a group of friends who begin experimenting with a ceramic covered embalmed hand. After the lighting of a candle and saying the film’s titular phrase, the group are able to conjure spirits, which when invited to, temporarily possess whoever is holding the hand. However, the connection has to be severed after 90 seconds or the spirits won’t leave. Amongst the group is Mia (Sophie Wilde), a young woman whose first encounter with the hand happens to fall on the anniversary of her mother’s death. Unresolved trauma, check.
Both visually and conceptually, the film’s premise is undeniably distinctive. The design of the ceramic hand, the accompanying rules, and the subsequent horrors that they unleash all help the film carve out a place for itself in the genre in truly memorable fashion. By updating the fairly generic “cursed object” and “teen horror” tropes, Talk to Me offers audiences a fresh Gen Z take on these genre staples, but, crucially, without becoming insufferable.
This is especially the case in the film’s confident first act. A succinct, yet sinister cold opening gives audiences a shocking glimpse at the feral beast of a film that the directors are about to untether. The first seance sequence then impressively establishes the concept, combining more traditional jumpscares with some genuinely disturbing imagery, further enhanced by the effective camerawork and sound design. It does all this while also naturally integrating social media usage into these moments and supplementing them with perceptive ideas about peer pressure. In turn these help to create some fairly well-constructed, albeit obvious, parallels to recreational drug use and substance abuse.
All of this demonstrates a clear understanding of modern society and how a story like this would play out today. Taking these tried and tested horror elements and tweaking them ever so slightly really helps Talk to Me to feel as contemporary as it should. And as the film progresses so too does the characters’ relationship with the hand, yet it’s not as straightforward as you might expect, as the film takes several big swings with its plot. This leads to a truly wild combination of awkward humour, distressing scares, and brutal violence that culminates in an overwhelming sense of disquiet.
Moments of this first act brilliance are carried throughout the rest of the film too, however the proceedings do become slightly more conventional as the story continues. Its concept and the ideas it dabbles with have such vast potential, but sadly aren’t explored quite as deeply as they could and should have been. The film’s shift to focusing more on Mia’s trauma is a serviceable direction to take the story, but never becomes as compelling or exciting as the more unique horror concept Talk to Me boasts in its beginning. It’s during this shift where the film starts to feel more aligned with the well-trodden mental health tropes of the genre, slightly succumbing to them in a way that it originally avoided. Despite this, Sophie Wilde is excellent in the lead role, charting Mia’s ongoing hauntings with appropriate desperation and distress.
So while the film’s latter sections are never just quite as captivating or committed as its killer first act, the Philippous still manage to deliver a creative, eerie and satisfying climax to their impressive debut. In doing so, they’ve instantly made a name for themselves in the horror genre and ensured that they are a creative force well worth watching. And with such a distinct and appealing horror concept at its core, Talk to Me could very easily be revisited with a sequel. But for now, their debut takes such a firm grip of the genre it leaves a mark that simply can’t be ignored.
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