Talk to Me

Talk to your kids about the occult before their friends do.

Sophie Wilde learns the joys of recreational possession in the Philippou brother's debut horror movie Talk to Me.

Mia (Sophie Wilde) is a lost soul. Two years after the death of her mother, she finds herself adrift. She can’t connect with her father, who she feels isn’t telling her the truth about the circumstances surrounding her mother’s demise. Her only solace is spending nearly every waking hour at her best friend Jade’s (Alexandra Jensen) home. Mia is especially happy to play family with Jade’s mother (Miranda Otto) and little brother Riley (Joe Bird).

Still, though, whenever she’s left alone with her thoughts, Mia is overwhelmed by the loss she’s experienced.

So when the kids at her school start playing a possession game, Mia wonders if it’s just the thing to lift her spirits. Jade is against the game, thinking it’s all fake for social media attention, but Mia is hopeful that it really is the life-changing rush everyone says it is.

They head to a party and Mia blithely volunteers to go first. The rules are simple — light a candle, shake the porcelain-dipped embalmed hand of a famous medium, and say “talk to me”. The result is immediate. A dead person, in varying grotesque states that inform how they died, appears and asks to be let in. The player must invite the ghost to possess them, and then for 90 seconds, the audience of teens gets enough TikTok and Snapchat content for a week. When the time is up, the candle is blown out and the hand is yanked from the possessed person’s grasp. Everyone has a good laugh.

Well, almost everyone.

Mia quickly becomes obsessed with the thrill of possession and even encourages Jade’s little brother to try it out. But Mia is shaken when she hears her mother’s voice during the game. Desperate to talk to her mom, to find that connection again, Mia begins pushing the limits of the game.

Is it a good idea to play Ghost Chatroulette? Or are you in a horror movie?

Nancy Reagan had it wrong in the 80s, instead of worrying about teens smoking weed at a party, she should have been telling them to Just Say No to spiritual possession. Frankly, a little underage drinking and debauchery is probably preferable to playing with embalmed body parts. I know it’s hard to be a parent now, but this is what comes of not raising your kids properly — show them The Exorcist and Sinister early so they know not to make deals with dead people or conduct ancient rituals, even if it gets massive views on TikTok.

Twin brother directors Danny Philippou and Michael Philippou cut their teeth on YouTube, making comedic horror content on their RackaRacka channel. The duo makes an assured debut with Talk to Me, a fantastically tense, creepy tale of why you shouldn’t let your teens go to parties. Most impressively, the movie boasts some truly gnarly effects (dead people look creepy, who knew?). Each dead person is its own meditation on body horror, and it’s fun to scrutinize them when they appear to try to guess how they met their end. It’s obvious that care was taken in makeup and styling, and that just enhances the eerie atmosphere of the film.

The Philippou brothers clearly love a trope, and they execute some of the most well-worn ghost/possession cliches perfectly. The teens are thoughtless to the point of lunacy. Sure, someone was killed using the hand before, but that won’t happen to them. They’re smarter, cooler, and whatever. Philippou brothers linger on these moments making the audience cringe. It’s easy to see this is going to go bad fast, but much like a ghost, you can only shout warnings to the screen and no one will hear you.

Though the script may be a bit predictable, it is taut and features some truly interesting character work.

At the core of the film is a heartbreaking performance from Wilde, who turns Mia’s destructive impulses into tragically understandable actions. Mia is so desperate to ignore her grief that it consumes her. She smiles and promises she’s fine, but she’s become almost hollow in her mother’s absence. So she looks for other connections, any connections — she’s a kinder sister to Riley than his own sibling, she’s the “good daughter” for Jade’s harried mother, she even flirts a bit with Jade’s boyfriend because nothing is ever enough to make her feel whole. It’s a devastating performance and one that makes it easy to understand why Mia would welcome something literally filling her body and allowing her to escape for a few minutes, even if it is a random ghost.

The real treat in Talk to Me, however, isn’t the destination, it’s the journey. The Philippous toy with tension in every scene, taking their time, but offering enough chills to keep viewers invested. At 95 minutes, it’s more solidly entertaining from opening to credits than either of the Barbenheimer films and won’t atrophy your muscles. If you’re a horror hound that likes a good take on a classic trope, this is definitely the movie for you.

Verdict: Tense and genuinely spine-tingling, this is a great take on a classic horror trope.

Talk to Me is rated R and available in theaters.