MOVIE INFO VIA ROTEN TOMATOES:
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.
REVIEW:
I usually like horror films that get their scares from deep wells of grief. That’s why Talk to Me, the first feature from the brothers Danny and Michael Phillipou, was something of a mixed bag for me. There’s that aching sense of melancholy that acts as a powerful haunting mechanism for the demons, ghouls and possessions to come. But there are also tonal disparities and textures that are adopted and abandoned, left hanging in the air, never to be fully defined. Talk to Me is an inconsistent yet promising first effort.
Talk to Me is held together by Sophie Wilde’s performance. Her Mia, is a distraught teenager barely getting over the death of her mother a year earlier. Her father Max (Marcus Johnson) is an emotionally distant soul that she can’t connect with. She finds a substitute family with her best friend, Jade (Alexandra Jensen) and Jax’s younger brother, Riley (Joe Bird). From every one else she remains alienated. They are a randy, raucous thrill seeking crowd who are into throwing séance and possession parties with a plastered over human hand with a series of graffiti instruction on its porcelain flesh.
The appendage frozen into a handshake position was rumored to be chopped from a long dead medium. The séances involve holding the hand and inviting possession by using the tile phrase and then inviting the spirits to come in and enter them for a minute. The entering is the easy, the letting go hard. Often the possessed has to be forcibly pulled from the hand. The encounters are filmed and shared between the partygoers.
The possessions are really brief cameos that allow the bit actors to have a method moment and a future audition tape to show. They are suitably frightening with Oedipal and revelatory hidden emotions, secrets and desires coming to the foreground. For Mia, the seances provide an opportunity to connect to her dead mother’s spirit.
The gooey practical effects and the visceral acting jolts are particularly effective in the first third, but wear out their welcome after the second and third iteration. All of it has a hurling energy that is violent but never openly cruel. Fortunately a possession gone very wrong puts an end to the party games when Riley’s possession ends up with him going to the hospital. Mia eventually acquires the hand and the plot starts to cohere around her attempts and misfires to be with her mother.
The Phillipous keep everything simple. They prefer to let the visuals talk over the words. They are content to put up with the illogic and plot holes this can occasionally create. They show particular sympathy for Mia’s character. They open up spaces for Mia’s disquiet and longing for connection to try to find a home, and how it has blinded her to the hands deceptions and dangers.
Everything has a strangely tender sympathy. It wrings scares from the reality of its frightening plausibility. Everything is swift but never seems improvised. Talk to Me is far from perfect. Still it’s fine enough for a streaming night.
Talk to Me gets a 3.0/5 or a B. It’s streaming on Hoopla, a free offering of most public library systems.
CREDITS:
Directed by
Written by
- Danny Philippou
- Bill Hinzman
Based onConcept
by Daley PearsonProduced by
- Samantha Jennings
- Kristina Ceyton
Starring
- Sophie Wilde
- Alexandra Jensen
- Joe Bird
- Otis Dhanji
- Miranda Otto
- Zoe Terakes
- Chris Alosio
- Marcus Johnson
- Alexandria Steffensen
CinematographyAaron McLiskyEdited byGeoff LambMusic byCornel Wilczek
Production
companies
- Screen Australia
- South Australian Film Corporation
- Adelaide Film Festival Investment Fund
- Head Gear Films
- Metrol Technology
- Causeway Films
Distributed by
- Maslow Entertainment
- Umbrella Entertainment
- Ahi Films
Release dates
- 30 October 2022(Adelaide)
- 27 July 2023(Australia)
Running time95 minutes[1]CountryAustraliaLanguageEnglishBudget$4.5 million
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