Talk to Me (2023)

Score: 3.5 / 5

We're used to stories of high schoolers or college kids doing dangerous things like drugs or dares, and those stories are familiar to film as well. Many classic slashers cashed in on these coming-of-age dramedies, as they usually are, by suggesting "rules" and punishments such as doing drugs or having sex will get you killed, as will sneaking away from the adults or being alone too long. These kinds of moralistic messages have resurfaced somewhat in recent years as social media has led to real-life horrors like violent chatrooms that spawn school shootings or viral trends that have kids doing scary or reckless acts to gain notoriety. Even some recent horror movies or thrillers like Truth or Dare and Nerve have dramatized these trends to usually less-than glowing critical and popular response.

So it was with some trepidation that I approached Talk to Me, the latest indie horror from A24 and the directorial debut of the Philippou brothers (who previously worked in the filming crew of The Babadook). The familiar tale concerns a ceramic-looking severed hand, covered in graffiti and symbols that suggest a storied history; a person grasping it and speaking the title will allow the person to see a deceased person. This is no mere monkey's paw, however, for the living person can subsequently allow the ghost to enter and possess the living body. Again, none of this is particularly new or interesting material, but it allows for storytelling in a variety of ways. Talk to Me works best by choosing a less-traveled path and executing its artistic choices with a grim confidence surprising from new filmmakers.

To start, there is never a single question about the supernatural effects of the hand, which isn't given a name or title itself. It's taken largely as the deadly serious device it is; a few characters passively comment that the possessed folks are just faking it or that it's some kind of elaborate hoax, but most characters know it to be true and so do the filmmakers. That such an item exists and is casually passing around over an unknown amount of time is pretty chilling, especially given its introduction to us in a series of social media-related posts about it. Anyone who sees these videos is treated to a gruesome, Grand Guignol spectacle of rolled-over black eyes, guttural voice changes, and some deeply creepy pronouncements of a usually morbid or suggestive nature. The heightened social awareness of this has turned into a series of house parties in which inebriated adolescents take turns "doing it" and filming each other. It's something between hazing and a rite of passage, documented for the world to see and comment upon. That is to say, it's eminently plausible, like somebody mentioning eating Tide pods online, or falling under the influence of a Slender Man. 

The kids, moreover, treat it less as a game than as a drug. Even the filmmakers depict these party scenes as something between a circle jerk and a séance, often utilizing EDM-type music over montages of various young adults acting fools while under the influence, as the camera whirls around them dizzyingly. Once possessed, the sound drops out and the camera jolts back with the character in their chair as their eyes black out; they often shiver, choke, sweat, and stop breathing in ways that, frankly, look life-threatening. But thankfully the resident "experts" on the hand are at hand (pardon me) in the form of Hayley (Zoe Terakes) and Joss (Chris Alosio), who currently own the cursed object. They have rules about this dance of death -- though it's left totally unclear how these rules became known -- including lighting a candle to attract spirits, tying the possessed person to a chair, and limiting their exposure to ninety seconds.

All this is just the setup, and from here the story takes a typical path forward. Australian teens Mia (an excellent Sophie Wilde), her best friend Jade (Alexandra Jensen), and Jade's younger brother Riley (Joe Bird) go to one of these morbid house parties to experiment with the hand. Things go well -- that is, as well as summoning ghosts and inviting possessions can go -- until Mia lets a spirit in. We're allowed, in this moment, to see the ghost she sees, and the ghosts in this movie are nothing short of terrifying (thank goodness they opted for quality makeup over special effects). One spirit that possesses her looks over at young Riley and declares that he is desired by other spirits present. It's a moment of pure horror, one that bleakly allows us to guess at the plot's trajectory. It's especially troubling as Mia, whose mother died by suicide two years prior and who is unable to process that grief, seems a little too eager to reconnect with her mother; she has effectively become an intimate sibling to Jade and Riley. She wants her mother back, but she certainly doesn't want to lose her new chosen family.

So when the spirit that possesses Riley announces itself as Mia's mother, Mia is forced into a horrific headspace she wasn't prepared for, and she keeps talking to the ghost well past the 90-second mark. Riley ends up in a coma after a vicious episode of self-harm, and it seems less and less likely Mia's beloved mother is really in there. It's helpful that the performances are uniformly excellent, especially when the characters do stupid or cruel things to each other; in that way, it's very much a Gen Z - oriented film that pokes fun even as it humanizes a generation vastly different from those classic slashers I mentioned earlier. Morality has shifted, socialization has shifted, and this follows the vein of Bodies Bodies Bodies in humanizing and almost satirizing the conceits of our current younger generation. It doesn't talk down, it talks to and from, which makes all the difference.

Naturally, all this suggests that a franchise is waiting to be born, particularly as so little about the hand is revealed and several characters remain quite alive by film's end. One imagines a burgeoning series -- like A24 finally embraced with Ti West's X trilogy -- that may include a prequel about the hand's origins (or about Mia's mother) and a sequel about Jade's family moving on. Or, you know, anything else related to the hand. I kind of hope that happens, because as it stands, Talk to Me is fine for a simple, spooky viewing, but doesn't really offer much meat to chew. And that's okay, especially for an introduction to broader ideas to come, again, much like we saw in X. This one is mostly about the possessive dangers of grief and the ways we hurt our loved ones while in thrall to despair; it's a theme worth revisiting, but it's quickly becoming old hat these days. Interestingly, and if this becomes a series, I hope more films explore this, the film's ending ties into Mia's other primary character trait, which is a willingness to isolate herself from reality, which is also arguably a point to be made about her generation (and maybe our culture as a whole since 2016 and again since 2020).