3 out of 5

Directed by: Danny and Michael Philippou

A nearly perfectly shot, sharply acted horror film that’s not scared to take the “elevated” horror genre towards ickier, more visceral territory. But it’s also limited in this same regard: becoming a somewhat standard supernatural slasher that’s just a bit more honest about its psychology, rendering it pretty – in a bloody way – but not very horrorful.

Talk To Me’s framing is looming tragedy, the rubber stamp of the A24 take on the genre: we are at what appears to be a wake, with teenaged Mia (Sophie Wilde) off to the side, listening to music, picking at her fingernail polish. Greetings from family members tell us this gathering is for Mia’s mother, and then we learn that this is a remembrance anniversary and not a wake itself – some years after Mia’s mother’s death. Kept out of focus, Mia’s father asks if all is alright, and it’s not, and we sense it never can be, but it’s back to the rest of Mia’s day – first picking up her’s friend’s younger brother, Riley (Joe Bird), then hanging out with said friend, Jade (Alexandra Jensen), who couldn’t make the anniversary gathering… perhaps because she’s currently distracted by her boyfriend and Mia’s ex, Daniel (Otis Dhanji).

Prior to this, we’ve had a somewhat obligatory (and yet unnecessary) cold open with some currently unrelated characters, telling us up front that there will be some violent shenanigans at some point. And I recognize such cold opens are often exactly for that purpose: to let us know that the slow burn that follows will lead somewhere, and perhaps further make us curious as to how things will connect back to that opening, but this sequence is so standard by this point that it does the opposite instead – it’s not “shocking” because its beats are pretty set in stone, and while it sets up Talk To Me’s observation on the observational nature of life nowadays – kids in this sequence immediately take out phones to video the violence – you might have already rolled your eyes at that because it’s also standard stuff by this point. Additionally, I don’t think commenting on this is part of Talk To Me’s intention – rather, the creators are just trying to capture teens how they are, which is the flick’s best success – but it further underlines the pointlessness of this opening.

Especially because there’s plenty of tension without it: the setup of Mia’s family / friend dynamic is so well done, and almost all through inference and not directly telling us anything. The drip-drop of information and how everyone is connected allows us to draw our own conclusions, and I do think that’s a smart way directors Danny and Michael Philippou, working from Danny’s and Bill Hinzman’s script, are poking at the aforementioned “observational nature,” by including social media as a story beat, but structuring the most important parts of their narrative such that we’re required to get some of the context ourselves. I’m not exactly sure how this could’ve been blown out to be an even stronger aspect of the film, since it only really takes this step far enough to get the plot going, then becomes fairly generic, but regardless, it’s a pretty big step in a good direction.

What gets us to that generic portion if the flick’s supernatural conceit: an embalmed, petrified hand, produced at a party, that – when grasped, and when the grasper says “talk to me,” allows that person to see the dead. A further step: you can let the dead take over your body, and that’s the only-do-it-for-90-seconds thrill (since we need some arbitrary rules for our horror movie spooks) that the kids film and post on various platforms, laughing at the bizarre behaviors of those overtaken.

While things are fun, the film, again, is so strong, because it captures the voices of the kids – with obvious thanks to the actors – perfectly: that weird push-pull of attention-seeking and insecurity that causes them / us to put themselves in potentially dangerous or truly embarrassing scenarios, but harmed or hurt by them, and yet volunteer for them again. So everyone takes a turn with the “talk to me” hand; inevitably the 90-seconds-only rule is violated, and inevitably… things start to go awry.

The Philippous’ approach to gore is very effective by being smart with practicality: you don’t have to do a ton of CG blood spurts or morphing if you’re smart about what’s on / off screen, and our camera will drift to suggest intention, then capture the subsequent motions without necessarily putting the action on full display. Sound design and grimdark cinematography and Cornel Wilczek’s unnerving score help our brains fill in the rest, alongside some brutal makeup for the after effects. And I don’t want to suggest that we don’t see things onscreen, just that what was captured was very precise, and made an impression.

But again, once we fully cross the line into the horror stuff, while the sharp look of the film persists, story-wise… there’s not really anything else to do. It’s kind of a paint-by-numbers to get us to a predictable end. And I don’t know exactly how else to proceed – escalation is how these movies go – but I think / hope I’ve been pointing out that the character interactions, and the indirect storytelling this allowed, are the film’s strengths, while the actual horror movie bits, if done well, are ultimately fairly staid. So there’s something about the tonal / genre mixing that just isn’t wholly pulled off here.

With all of this said, the Philippous are definitely on to something, veering away from what I find to be heavy-handedness in most A24 affairs, and being okay with just Saying The Thing, and tossing blood on it. The balance is off with Talk To Me, though – being a bit too arty to really unleash the horror, and then a bit too mired in horror tropes to really explore its more intriguing character / sociological elements.