Mia (Sophie Wilde) is an Aussie teenage girl struggling with depression in the wake of her mother’s (accidental?) suicide two years prior. Her best friend Jade (Alexandra Jensen) wants to be there for her, but also wants to spend time with her boyfriend (Otis Dhanji), who also happens to be Mia’s ex. Mia also has a better relationship with Jade’s family – comprised of bother Riley (Joe Bird) and mother Sue (Miranda Otto) than she does with her own father (Marcus Johnson).
Wanting to lose herself in something other than the anniversary of her mother’s death, Mia talks Jade into taking her to party to hang out with some local kids who have been playing a pretty weird game: Talk to Me. What is Talk to Me? Well, first it involves lighting a candle. Then you grasp a ceramic black magic hand – said to be the severed appendage of either a medium or a Satanist. Next you say “talk to me” and a spirit will appear before you. Finally, you invite them into your body for a bit of a supernatural ride for 90 seconds. It gives you a magical rush, like getting high on the dead. Kids today, am I right?
If you’re wondering why the threshold is 90 seconds, well, that’s because any longer than that allows the spirits (or whatever it is that takes hold of you) to linger. So we don’t want to do that. Naturally, this is exactly what happens later on, setting of a demonic domino effect that results in mutilation, destruction, and death. After that, it’s a race to break the dead’s hold on some of the group members before it’s too late.
If this sounds pretty tropey, that’s because it is. Tropes aren’t a bad thing however. They exist for a reason: because the work. The devil is in the details of how you use them to tell your tale and thrill your horror-loving audience. Talk to Me serves a main course of Ouija board rules, a side dish of Flatliners, a slice of Witchboard cake, and a glass of Blumhouse beer to wash it all down with. How tasty you find the resulting meal is entirely on you.
For me? I found it to be a bit bland. All of the right ingredients are there, but they’re not quite seasoned well enough to ever bring it home. End of metaphor.
Horror fandom has complained a lot of late that we’re getting “too many movies about trauma.” I don’t necessarily buy that, as a vast chunk of horror cinema has been about trauma since Day One. As the adage goes, it’s not what it’s about, it’s how it’s about it.
My biggest issue with this film is one that I feel plagues a lot of similar horror movies these days. A great many of them are pretty good at building tension and raising their stakes across their first two acts, but all too few of them bother to have all of that work culminate in a grand finale. More often than not, these movies end up plateauing in their third acts; failing to realize the full potential of their phantasmagorical concepts. Talk to Me falls into this same trap.
There’s a thrilling moment at the end of Act 2 that hints at an absolutely terrifying possibility for where the story might go, but what follows never makes good on it. Instead, we get a rather predictable finale that just repeats a lot of what transpired earlier in the film. Even the final moment of the movie, which is meant to be that one last chill before the credits roll, is unsurprising and rote. It’s a shame too, because the cast is pretty great from top to bottom.
I don’t mean to be overly harsh. This is not a bad movie at all. Unfortunately, it’s not a great one either. Like last month’s The Boogeyman, it’s another perfectly fine piece of theatrical horror that’s reach exceeds its grasp. One that is unlikely to stick with me beyond the next few days. Kudos to those that are loving it, but I’d much rather revisit something far more imaginative like Witchboard or Flatliners.
Talk to Me is an original horror thriller. It was directed by Danny and Michael Philippou, from a screenplay by Bill Hinzman, Daley Pearson, and Danny Philippou. The film was produced by Kristina Ceyton, Samantha Jennings, and Christopher Seeto. It stars Sophie Wilde, Alexandra Jensen, Otis Dhanji, Zoe Terakes, Chris Alosio, Joe Bird, Miranda Otto, James Oliver, Alexandria Steffensen, Marcus Johnson, Ari McCarthy, and Sunny Johnson.
The Schlocketeer 