From Jeremy Kibler

An A24 supernatural horror film imagined through today’s thrill-seeking youths doing the darnedest viral challenges, Talk to Me is a wicked, legitimately distressing doozy. First-time Australian filmmakers Danny and Michael Phillipou (twin brothers who run YouTube channel RackaRacka) bring an airtight assuredness and an inescapable dread to their feature debut, instantly grouping them into the upper echelon of modern horror storytellers. Similar to David Robert Mitchell’s It Follows, Talk to Me boasts one of the most original horror-movie hooks in recent memory: think a Zillennial Flatliners.

After losing her mum exactly two years ago, Mia (Sophie Wilde) has spent less time at home with her father who’s grown distant. She feels like another child to single mum Sue (Miranda Otto) and Mia’s best friend Jade (Alexandra Jensen) and Jade’s younger brother Riley (Joe Bird). One night, they sneak out to a party where they’re introduced to a new party trick that’s gone viral. Who needs an Ouija board anymore to conjure up the dead? Just get strapped to a chair and have someone light a candle. Link hands with a ceramic hand that allegedly has an embalmed hand underneath. Say the words, “talk to me,” and you’re linked to a spirit. Then say, “I let you in,” and the spirit transfers into your body. Release your hand after 90 seconds and have that candle blown out, or else the ghoul might want to stay. It’s a new high that all the cool kids are getting, but when someone close to Mia gets hurt in the process, it might be time to call it quits. 

Talk to Me has our attention from the word go, as a high school party comes to an abrupt end. On a planet where kids have swallowed laundry pods as a viral challenge, having a spirit possess your body for 90 seconds as a thrill isn’t that far off. Still, this concept simply wouldn’t work as well as it does without strong performances and a deeply felt emotional core, as well as some impeccably gruesome practical make-up effects and disquieting sound design. 

The Phillipou brothers have such a firm handling of mood and tone, knowing when to let in a little levity but still playing their audience like a fiddle. A bedroom scene involving something in a corner and a foot strikes a pitch-perfect balance of shudder-inducing night terror and nervously funny Sam Raimi-level nuttiness. The script by Bill Hinzman and Danny Phillipou shrewdly never gets hung up on mythology or over-explains the origins of this ceramic hand. All we know is that the two keepers of the hand, Hayley (a magnetic Zoe Terakes) and Joss (Chris Alosio), know and that’s more than enough. The teens’ reckless revelry is efficiently captured in a scary-funny, kinetically edited montage of their bodies getting hijacked for quick thrills. 

A sweet voice belying a what-the-hell fearlessness, Sophie Wilde makes for a sympathetic emotional anchor. A newcomer notwithstanding, the actress is so emotionally available, reaching raw, dark places as Mia mostly goes with her gut on how to stop this curse. Something that happens against Mia’s better judgment is truly upsetting and presented as a brutal, visceral, heart-stopping blow as much as the telephone pole moment in Ari Aster’s Hereditary. Because of Mia’s vulnerable state, her choices, however selfish or extreme, make emotional sense. 

All of the actors are naturals, and that’s key when all of these characters are forced to suffer (and go black-eyed for a minute and a half). In a genre that sometimes treats the parents like the ones in Charlie Brown, Miranda Otto gets more to play as Jade and Riley’s mother with an equal amount of warmth and no-bullshit honesty. Nothing gets past her, until it does, and Otto makes those character beats heartbreaking.

A slumber-party horror movie that means business, Talk to Me grabs us by the throat and never stops cackling in sick delight. It sees its conceit through without compromise. There is one direction the film flirts with, but it would have been far too inevitable and mean-spirited to satisfy; the ending they choose is no less devilish. Yet another knockout from A24 (genre or not), this is a take-no-prisoners nerve-rattler waiting to get under your skin. Let it in!

Talk to Me hits theaters on July 28, 2023. 

Rating: 4/5

Follow Jeremy at @JKiblerFilm