Talk to Me (2023)

Directed by Danny & Michael Philippou. Starring Sophie Wilde, Alexandra Jensen, Otis Dhanji, Joe Bird, Zoe Terakes, Chris Alosio, Miranda Otto, Marcus Johnson, Alexandria Steffensen, Ari McCarthy. [R]

For kids who find the Tide Pod Challenge to be a bunch of baby stuff, there’s the “Talk to me/I let you in” game where you touch a severed hand—don’t worry, it’s encased in ceramic!—say those phrases, and invite a restless spirit into your body. But keep an eye on the clock, ‘cause if you let it linger for longer than ninety seconds, it might not leave. Still dealing with the trauma and grief surrounding her mother’s apparent suicide, Mia (Wilde) probably shouldn’t be playing such parlor possession games, but curiosity, unresolved issues, and peer pressure are powerful… I imagine you can guess roughly where this is going, and you wouldn’t be wrong, but how it gets there is a little more surprising, and this is a horror movie where plot takes a distant backseat to atmosphere, dread, queasiness, texture (especially in terms of its exaggeratedly visceral sound design), and knowing the unknowable. The screenplay, by Bill Hinzman and co-director Danny Philippou, has faith in the audience to figure things out on their own. A lesser script would’ve supplied pages of dialogue for characters to talk out their problems and theories at length—I’m still not 100% sure what to make of the motivations/truth behind the mother’s death or her spectral form—and the film suggests its startling moments without explanation (why the foot, lady??) or feeling like cheats for effect. (Heck, it doesn’t even overplay the drug addiction metaphor of teenagers going nuts with the hand—yes, hand, butit’d be too much of an on-the-nose stretch to go the self-pleasure route instead.) Although the whole cast does solid, energetic, and most importantly, grounded work, it’s safe to say that newcomer Wilde carries this thing, and her big, expressive eyes do a lot of that heavy lifting. Good creepy, disturbing “fun”, and yet another reminder of why, like it or not, A24 is leading the way today in the horror genre. One sincere complaint: the against-the-grain music choices can be mood killers, none more so than blasting a loud and fast “banger” during the end credits, cutting through the pool of disquieting despair the story ends on. Feature debut for the Philippou brothers, whose roots are in an Australian YouTube channel.

81/100