Gripping stuff… (Picture: Matthew Thorne)
An embalmed hand that can let you communicate with spirits on the other side – what could go wrong with that? For a group of friends in the Australian horror flick Talk To Me, they’re about to find out…
The cursed/haunted objects are nothing new in the horror genre – just look at your videotape in The Ring, the possessed dolls of Chucky and Annabelle, and perhaps more fittingly to this film, WW Jacob’s The Monkey’s Paw, it’s easy to see why they’ve become such a staple of horror; it’s easy to build an ominous tone around a tangible thing, and a great way to build mystery to hook you into a concept; you always know something bad will happen when it’s around.
In the case of Talk To Me, the object is an embalmed hand of unknown origin that has wound up in the possession of a group of teenagers in Adelaide, Australia.
It soon becomes a viral sensation around the high school as willing participants are filmed grabbing the hand and uttering the words ‘talk to me’ followed by ‘I let you in;’ to become possessed by the spirits they have made contact with.
The rush is something else, leading to some kids getting hooked on the new taboo, including Mia (Sophia Wilde), who is still grieving her mother’s suicide one year ago. But when one session goes wrong, Mia soon finds that the spirits have a much stronger grip on her than she had assumed.
This independent Australian horror movie has already made waves since its debut at the Adelaide Film Festival last year. It sparked a bidding war following its Sundance debut and has been generating buzz ever since as one of the more critically lauded horror movies of the last year. While it may offer several familiar tropes, it is not hard to see why it has garnered such a reputation.
Made by YouTubers turned filmmakers Danny and Michael Philippou – aka RackaRacka – Talk To Me is an effective genre exercise that builds a suitably creepy and enigmatic energy around this cursed object, fuelled by nightmarish imagery and strong performances. It is also, particularly in its earlier moments, very funny, which helps bind you to the characters before it all goes crazy.
Early sequences involving the parties where our young cast gets hooked on the power of the hand also do well to establish the allure and the pull of the object at the film’s centre. Treated like it’s the new hot drug on campus, Talk To Me riffs on the likes of Joel Schumacher’s Flatliners to establish that there is a high that everyone’s chasing from this object that proves hard to let go of, even once things take a turn. The drug parallels are easy to read, and smartly the movie doesn’t hit you over the head with that messaging, with one montage in particular expertly crafting both the sense of fun and danger in communicating with the dead.
Sophia Widle as Mia leads the cast (Picture: A24)
As the film’s protagonist, Sophia Wilde shines, deftly navigating Mia’s trauma and loneliness as she tries to find a way to navigate the loss of her mother. She thinks she’s found an answer with the embalmed hand, as she soon becomes convinced it’s a way to communicate with her mother, but of course, things take a much darker turn. Mia goes through the wringer, and Wilde is convincing throughout, putting in the kind of eye-catching performance that makes her one to watch in the future.
The scares are delivered effectively and with a playful tongue-in-cheekiness to the tone. The filmmakers are well-versed in the mechanics of a good jump scare and take joy in making you wait for the big reveal, while also often punctuating the scares with bone-rattling sound effects and shocking violence. It is a great experience with a packed cinema, as the scares are teased out, pulling you along on a tightrope before suddenly cutting the line from beneath your feet.
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Horror movies have always been a staple of sleepovers, renting the latest scary movie for all of your friends to huddle around the TV late at night and see if you can make it through to the end without getting too scared.
Talk To Me embodies that kind of horror movie, the one designed to be seen communally, where the scares are fun, with characters worth rooting for – all the while acting beyond the realms of common sense (seriously, stop using the hand, you’ll cry). A well-executed concept, that’ll grab you tightly by the hand and refuse to let go until its doom-laden finale.
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Will you let it in?
