Australian twins Danny and Michael Philippou began their careers in viral YouTube videos before switching to features with their striking horror possession tale, Talk to Me, a cautionary tale about the world of spirits.
Grade: B+
It stars Sophie Wilde, Alexandra Jensen, Joe Bird, Otis Dhanji, Miranda Otto, Zoe Terakes, Chris Alosio, Marcus Johnson, and Alexandria Steffensen.
Premise: The film follows a group of teenagers who discover that they can contact spirits by using a mysterious severed and embalmed hand.
At a house party in Adelaide, Cole frantically searches for his brother, Duckett. When he finds Duckett and attempts to bring him home, Duckett stabs Cole and kills himself.
Sometime later, Mia, now 17, is struggling with the anniversary of her mother Rhea’s death from an accidental sleeping pill overdose and her distant relationship with her father Max.
Mia, best friend Jade, and Jade’s little brother Riley sneak out to a gathering hosted by Hayley and Joss, where the main attraction is a severed embalmed hand. Holding the hand and saying “Talk to me” enables communication with a deceased person’s spirit, while saying “I let you in” allows the spirit to possess them.
There are rules to be followed: To prevent spirits from binding themselves to the hand holder, the possession must end before 90 seconds by pulling away the embalmed hand and blowing out a candle.
Mia volunteers to go first and is possessed by a spirit that displays menacing focus on Riley. Joss and Hayley struggle to break the connection, and the time limit is slightly exceeded.
Soon, everyone except Riley and James takes several turns being possessed, invoking different spirits each time.
Mia lets Riley take a turn for 50 seconds. Riley appears to be possessed by the spirit of Rhea, who attempts to reconcile with Mia. Mia stops the group from ending the possession to keep talking to her mother. The spirits overtake Riley’s body, and they make him attempt suicide by banging his head against the walls, sending him to the hospital in critical condition.
At the end, Mia is in the hospital, where she sees a fully recovered Riley talking to Jade and Sue while Max leaves. Nobody looks or talks to her, she has no reflection in the mirror, and her body is disfigured.
After becoming engulfed in darkness, she sees a hand extended over a candle in the distance. Grabbing it, she is suddenly summoned to a party in Greece, where a partygoer holds her hand and tells her, “I let you in.”
Directors Danny and Michael Philippou worked closely with producer Samantha Jennings, a co-founder of production company Causeway Films, who is familiar with Adelaide. After joining forces successfully on The Babadook (2014), another Causeway production, they reteamed for Talk to Me, allowing Jennings to keep them grounded and contribute to the movie’s shape.
The move had a preview screening at the Adelaide Film Fest in October 2022, as closing night. Then, it benefited from international exposure at the 2023 Sundance Film Fest in its midnight section.
In Kuwait, the film was banned from theatrical release, due to featuring a non-binary and transgender actor, Zoe Terakes, alongside with the American satire Barbie (which has a feminist theme, as well as a transgender actress), claiming that their motivation was to protect “public ethics and social traditions.”
Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of “B+” on an A+ to F scale.
Talk to Me marked the best start for an A24 film since Midsommar in 2019. Ultimately, it surpassed Hereditary as A24’s highest-grossing horror domestically, with a total of over $48 million.
The horror picture grossed $48.3 million in the U.S., and $43.9 million in other countries, for a worldwide total of $92.2 million.
With a gripping story, gooey practical effects, distressing visual jolts, Talk to Me spins a creepy 21st-century horror yarn, with hurtling energy helped by a god dosage of graphic violence.
The film owes much of its potency to Sophie Wilde’s continually evolving performance. Even when the tale threatens to descend into incoherence (and shaky logic), Wilde pulls it back. She conveys a vivid sense of the ravaged emotions of Mia, who is ultimately a captive of her own grief and trauma rather than the spirits or other forces of the great beyond.
Perhaps reflecting the zeitgeist, trauma has become a catch-all shorthand for many horror filmmakers, including the Philippous, though they still managed to make a confidently crafted feature, and one of the most purely fun horror films in quite some time.
Cast
Sophie Wilde as Mia
Alexandra Jensen as Jade, Mia’s friend
Joe Bird as Riley, Jade’s younger brother
Otis Dhanji as Daniel, Jade’s boyfriend
Miranda Otto as Sue, Jade’s and Riley’s mother
Zoe Terakes as Hayley, a party host
Chris Alosio as Joss, a party host
Marcus Johnson as Max, Mia’s father
Alexandria Steffensen as Rhea, Mia’s mother
Sunny Johnson as Duckett
Ari McCarthy as Cole, Duckett’s brother
Jacek Koman as Burke Spirit
