‘Talk to Me’ Is a Thrillingly Weird Horror-Movie Debut From A24

Teenagers — you can’t reason with them, you can’t get them off their phones, and you definitely can’t convince them that fucking around with a cursed mummified hand that allows them to speak to the dead is a bad idea, amirite? Talk to Me, the directorial debut from Australian twin brothers Danny and Michael Philippou, starts with the premise that if a group of suburban high schoolers somehow came into contact with a mysterious body part, encased in plaster and petrified into a permanent claw, they would not turn it in to the authorities, contact a museum curator, or alert their local priest or rabbi. Instead, they would immediately treat it like the supernatural equivalent of a nitrous oxide canister, taking collective hits off of it and posting the results on social media for the lulz. These filmmakers know their audience all too well.

We know this free-floating, five-digit portal to the afterlife has some bad mojo attached to it from the jump, courtesy of a preamble that ends in a bloody murder-suicide. By the time Mia (Sophie Wilde), her best friend Jade (Alexandra Jensen), and Jade’s little brother Riley (Joe Bird) end up at a house party, this item is being dangled as a double-dare-you entry to instant in-crowd acceptance. Which Mia, frankly, could use: Her grief over the death of her mother has left her feeling discombobulated; she’s slightly tweaked over Jade dating her old crush, Daniel (Otis Dhanji); and the party’s host, Hayley (Zoey Tarakes, nailing the charming alpha-bully vibe), thinks Mia is a weirdo and a walking bummer.

So she agrees to go first. The object’s current owner, Joss (Chris Alosio), lays down the rules. Whoever is in the hot seat has to get tied down. They grasp the conduit, as if they were shaking hands with it. A candle is lit. The person says, “Talk to me” — at which point, they may suddenly see someone in the room that wasn’t there previously, and likely in a state of decay. Then comes the kicker: Should they be brave enough to take it a step further, they utter the words “I let you in.” And boom, they’re possessed by whatever spirit has been offered a chance to take over a corporeal body. Just let go before the 90-second mark (make sure you have a designated timer), and then it’s time for the next lucky contestant to get their demonic occupation on.

It’s a rush for these kids, and you can feel the directors getting their own second-hand high off of filming these scenes. Having cut their teeth by posting videos under the joint nom de YouTube RackaRacka, the Philippou brothers have established a signature D.I.Y. brand of gory, gonzo, and giddy; let’s just say that a short like Ronald McDonald Chicken Massacre lives up to its title. That same live-wire energy runs through Talk to Me‘s early talk-to-the-hand sequences, whether it involves someone croaking out cryptic threats (“Heeeeeee’d liiiiiike youuuuuu!“) or inadvertently making out with a bulldog. They keep that crackling sense of electricity going once things start to take a turn for the worse, as well. Seems that Riley, the de facto runt of this particular litter of teenagers, wants to test his mettle. The spirit who he lets in happens to be Mia’s late mother… or at least, something saying it’s her mom. She’s so desperate to speak to her that the 90-second rule gets bypassed. And that’s when shit officially goes off the rails.

From here, the movie settles into a warped groove, pinging between the gang trying to get to the bottom of what exactly happened when Riley tried his hand at evil-hand-holding, whether or not he might have let something sneak into our world, and if that dead woman whispering sweet maternal nothings in Mia’s ear isn’t something a little more sinister. And it’s in this back half that you remember that this is a feature debut, albeit an impressive-enough one, and that the brothers’ enthusiasm for mayhem may be at a higher level than their chops. Things like tight pacing and sustaining tension come and go in fits and spurts. And though trauma and grief have now become a short-cut way of adding gravitas when stringing together horror-movie set pieces and jump scares, there are moments when you can feel the particular theme being strained to the breaking point here. (That’s not to say that Wilde doesn’t shoulder the responsibility of showing us Mia’s pain; watching her gives you that great sense of “wow, who is that?” discovery. And this certainly isn’t the worst griefsploitation offender in recent memory.)

Talk to Me purposefully ends on an open-ended note, suggesting not just a reversal of fate but the chance of further excursions into one hellish version of the hereafter. The Philippous have said they could envision this as a franchise for their patron saints A24, who snapped up the film after a wild Sundance premiere and a heated bidding war. (Memo to the filmmakers and the studio: Please reconsider this franchise idea. We do not need Talk X, or some eventual prequel in which we find out the origin story of Reginald Von Handerson, who once made a deal with the devil only to lose his soul and his appendage, yadda yadda yadda.) Better to think of this less as the first in a potential series and more like an extraordinary calling card — not the beginning of endless sequels but the baby step toward a long and fruitful career. As a horror movie, Talk is cheap thrills, done cleverly and with an abundance of voltage. As a proof-of-concept for what these gents can do, given some time and a couple extra gallons of Karo syrup, this is a hell of an introduction. Hands down.

From Rolling Stone US.