Talk to Me

Directed by Danny and Michael Philippou

Oof, it’s been a minute hasn’t it? I have tons of excuses but let’s just cut that and get to why I’m here, I saw a movie and wanted to write about it. If you’re familiar with my tastes, then you already know I’m a big fan of the horror movies from A24, I loved Hereditary, Saint Maude, and The Lighthouse in particular, so whenever they release something I pay attention. Talk to Me already had a level of expectation going in, I’d heard that a lot of beloved genre filmmakers praised it, and that it had been doing well financially, but A24 stuff doesn’t always click with me, so I wanted to see it before I recommended it to anyone. Oh man, am I glad I saw this. Talk to Me is a breath of fresh air, a new take on an outdated horror subgenre that shows just what you can do with a simple premise and quality filmmaking.

Talk to Me follows a teenager, Mia, who is struggling with the loss of her mother a few years back and her growing estrangement from the remaining members of her family. During a party, Mia encounters a bizarre artifact, a strange ceramic covered arm that its owner claims is cursed and who uses the hand in a series of TikTok style videos. Mia and friends get involved with this arm, of course, and that involvement turns out not to be so great, this is a horror movie after all.

In the interest of avoiding spoilers I won’t get any deeper than that into the plot, I’ll head straight into my feelings. I loved Talk To Me. When I first went in I found the premise kind of silly, but the story expertly handles it, presenting a realistic scenario around an idea that could have devolved into B-movie shlock without proper guidance. And unlike many horror films, Talk to Me is scary, successfully crafting frightening scenes around one object. In classic horror fashion, the scariest part of the movie isn’t really the cursed arm, but what that arm represents, what it alludes to, and how the characters respond to it. Mia, played by Sophie Wilde, anchors the movie with one of the most interesting horror protagonists in years, creating a character you can empathize with and be frustrated by, who struggles with so many things that people deal with every single day, without becoming preachy or a director’s mouthpiece. 

I always try to be even-handed when I write about movies, but there isn’t anything that sticks out to me that I didn’t like about Talk to Me, with the notable exception that sometimes I found it hard to understand the characters who had strong Australian accents, but when this comes out on VoD just watch it with subtitles. The more I think about Talk to Me the more I think that this is going to be a future classic; the cast is great, the effects are great, the violence is scarce but shocking and grotesque, the ending is phenomenal, and how this world handles its heavy subject matter is tragic and believable. 

When this comes out on VoD, rent it, hell, buy it. Preorder the blu-ray. Treat yourself to some good horror and feel something when you watch a movie. Now that I have all that positivity out of the way, I am about to watch a movie about a killer sloth, which I’m sure will be just as good.