PremiumTalk To Me: An Eerie Horror Tale That Hands Out The Thrills
In Talk to Me, the freshman feature from Aussie twins Danny and Michael Philippou, a severed hand encased in plaster acts as a conduit between the living and the dead. Prahlad Srihari reviews.
Last Updated: 09.38 PM, Aug 04, 2023
OUR hands are the most immediate physical manifestation of our agency. Depending on requirement, the pair can play the role of actor, mediator and facilitator. It’s why reading about a disembodied hand walking around and acting on its own volition in Clive Barker’s short story “The Body Politic”, or watching Thing do the same in The Addams Family, feels like a palpable loss of the human agency we take for granted. If not for our hands, we wouldn’t be able to take control of our most indispensable appendage: our phones. How would we scroll, tap, swipe, zoom, click, record, share, browse, navigate, and, not least of all, tweet? It goes without saying smartphones have taken over our lives and transformed how we connect, feel and touch. As a result, the idea of having the world in the palm of our hands starts to feel formidable and full of spooky implications.
In Talk to Me, the freshman feature from Aussie twins Danny and Michael Philippou, a severed hand encased in plaster acts as a conduit between the living and the dead. Otherworldly possession is at once a novelty drug, a rite of passage, and the new blackout challenge for the thrill-seeking, Ouija-bored teens of a sleepy Adelaide suburb. The movie derives most of its initial strength from the simplicity of its hook. Light a candle. Clasp the hand. Utter the magic words (“talk to me” followed by “I let you in”). Enjoy a quick high. For 90 seconds tops. Or risk overdosing.
Once videos of teens under the influence start to go viral, everyone chasing clout wants in on the trend, so much so it becomes a party staple. Every night, friends come together to play Possession round-robin style. One by one, each take turns hosting spirits. While their body contorts and writhes in ecstasy, fellow partakers have their phones ready to film the devilry and post it online. The Philippous set the ball rolling with a keyed-up mood-setter at a house party where a young man (Ari McCarthy) is suffering through a bad trip, and his brother (Sunny Johnson) is trying to escort him out. Instead of lending a hand, the other partygoers whip out their phones to capture the distraught man who has fallen under an inescapable spell. “Are you serious? Stop filming!” shouts the brother in protest to no avail.
Clout is the most valuable currency in the spectator sport of social media. But engaging with the world through the lens of a phone camera creates an emotional distance, like the person you are filming is a mere actor under pressure to perform an unscripted role in your horror movie. Viral challenges like the one depicted in Talk to Me tend to draw out the worst in exhibitionists and spectators, many of whom don’t know where to draw the line. One possessed teen gets so horny he makes out with a dog. Seeing all the older kids party, a preteen decides to join in. (Let’s just say it doesn’t end well for him.) Peer pressure forces everyone to conform.
For 17-year-old Mia (Sophie Wilde), the game of possession starts off as an opportunity to get out of her own head. It has been two years since her mother died, possibly by suicide. Still in mourning, she revisits Snapchat memories on her phone for some comfort. The chance to reconnect with her mother and get the answers she needs to move on, however, proves too inviting to pass over. With each communion, she reaches deeper into the otherworld and gets laxer with the 90-second rule, not realising her need for closure has made her and those around her sitting ducks to a manipulative spirit. The severed hand she starts to obsessively rely upon, serves as a tangible metaphor for the human touch and meaningful connections we have lost in an increasingly online world.
On losing her mother, Mia grew estranged from her father (Marcus Johnson). Instead of repairing the relationship, she finds herself a surrogate family, moving in with long-time best friend Jade (Alexandra Jensen), Jade’s younger brother Riley (Joe Bird) and their single mother Sue (Miranda Otto). But as Mia gets more and more hooked on the out-of-body experience, pre-existing tensions — for instance Mia’s ex now dating Jade — boil over. Wilde’s revelatory performance as an impulsive but vulnerable teen looking for answers in all the wrong places brings its own mutable terror to the film.
As so many horror filmmakers have done in the past, the Philippous employ roadkill as an omen of the nightmare to come. In Jordan Peele’s Get Out, it was a deer. In Karyn Kusama’s The Invitation, it was a coyote. This being an Australian film, Mia encounters a dying kangaroo halfway into a Sia singalong on the car ride home. Thereafter, scares are evenly adrenalised with a bone-crunching sound design, gnarly practical effects and a camera that tilts and moves as if possessed. One dynamic party montage sees Mia and her friends commune with the spirits to the tune of “La Foule,” in which Edith Piaf sang about connecting with a stranger at a party, joining hands and bodies, dancing to the rhythms of the crowd, and feeling dizzy, intoxicated and happy — only to be pulled apart.
If Talk to Me is able to take the temperature of the current digital age — in all its callousness and overstimulation — to a terrifying degree, it’s because the Philippous earned their stripes making viral videos for their YouTube channel RackaRacka. The brothers understand perfectly well how obsessive subcultures can spin out online. But what’s more impressive is how they channel the illicit excitement of a twisted party game into their propulsive debut, narratively and formally, without the sanctimony of an after-school special.