TALK TO ME is a supremely terrifying film mixing the horrors of the restless undead with the greater horror of emotionally absent parents. The directing debut of brothers Danny and Michael Philippou is a story of quiet despair that grows geometrically as it progresses for its teenage protagonists who learn too late that the spirit world is nothing to laugh at.
The prologue sums it up as a party goes horribly wrong with a stabbing and a gruesome suicide for reasons which will come to light later. That would be the plaster hand (or is it more?) owned by Hayley and Joss, (Zoe Terakes and Chris Alosio) tough-talking outsiders who throw parties at other kids’ homes where it is used to summon spirits that are invited first to speak, and then to possess the hapless teen making the offer in front of his or her giggling friends with camera phones capturing video of event. The draw is irresistible, particularly to Mia (Sophie Wilde) on the two-year anniversary of the mother’s fatal overdose, and her best friend Jade (Alexandra Jensen), who watch the videos on social media and think that having their eyeballs go inky black might be a fun way to kill time. Of course, it isn’t, as the spirits prey on Mia’s grief and Jade’s prickling uneasiness over her straight-laced boyfriend Daniel (Otis Dhanji) still being friends with Mia after they broke up.
The brothers Philippou are subtle, taking their visuals from light-hearted teenage angst through several stages of increasing darkness and fear. They scatter telltale signs of what is come starting with that suicide, moving through a wounded kangaroo in need of euthanasia, and both Mia’s distant father (Marcus Johnson) and Jade’s sharp-tongued, seemingly omniscient mother (Miranda Otto) so consumed with bitterness that it hangs like a shroud over her, infecting everyone. There is an intensity to the close-ups as Mia’s world becomes similarly infected with the spirits that follow her home (and elsewhere) after the game, camera focus honing in and blurring out with a sickening sense of vertigo. The reality behind the visitations becomes similarly blurred with Mia’s desires, fears, and hopes. Mirrors reflect, or don’t, a hand appears where it shouldn’t, and an act of kindness escalates to blood-curdling violence.
Wilde gives a gripping performance remarkable for its nuance. With only minor changes in affect, she conveys ennui and love and anger while becoming the embodied vessel of the film’s overarching theme of despair. It is through her eyes that we see the spirits during the first ritual in the story, giving us the stark terror of the unlovely entities she beholds, and the exhilarating rush of adrenaline after it is over.
This is a tight, lean, and mean script that is psychological in its focus, but not afraid to go graphically gory when necessary. And it more than makes the case for that necessity. TALK TO ME is a film that will haunt your dreams with images that are not the stuff of conventional nightmares and are all the more effective for the toll it takes on the characters on screen and on us.
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