Talk To Me

 

Talk To
The Hand

Talk To Me
Directed by
Danny and Michael Philippou
Australia A24 2022

Talk To Me is a refreshing new horror movie from Australia and the feature length directorial debut from the Philippou Brothers. The film stars the brilliant Sophie Wilde as Mia, who has lost her mother to suicide a couple of years prior to the opening of the film and who is trying to cope and just reconnect with life in general. She has a close network of friends who treat her like family as she’s a little numb to her father, who she lives with. One of the things she wants to do is try out, with her friends, a new phenomenon which has been doing the rounds in her social network. Namely, getting together in a group and... talking to a hand.

But not just any hand... it’s a preserved dead hand from a spiritualist (or a satanist, depending on who you believe)... and when you grip it in a handshake, you say “Talk To Me” and you’re instantly talking to someone who has died, sitting across from you. You then say “I let you in” and that spirit possesses your body (so the subject is pre-tied to a chair in order that he/she doesn’t run away when possessed) and you take on the personality and traits of that person. The trick... the caveat which is the obvious plot point leading to the supernatural shenanigans that ensue... is that you can only be in that state for 90 seconds or the spirit inside you will try to stay and hitch a ride, so to speak. And sometimes it can be a bugger breaking the grip of the host from the hand to ensure that time limit.

So there’s your basic plot set up and, of course, once Mia tries and then her friend’s younger brother has a go, who sees Mia’s dead mother (or perhaps not)... things get bad and, once Mia fails (like at least one other) to have her grip broken in time, she starts seeing her mother in reflections and starts getting instructions from her, which can be pretty dangerous for others at some point.

Now I’d heard good things about this and can confirm that it’s a pretty good slice of supernatural hokum which is obviously a real crowd pleaser. What I wasn’t expecting was for the lack of jump scare upon jump scare throughout the movie. I mean, sure there are some jumpy moments but it’s like the Philippou Brothers have not gone to that ‘modern American school of horror movie making’ which everyone else theses days seem to have spent some time with. And it’s not wall to wall score (or wall to wall atonal and raggedy ambient sound design, for that matter)... everything is done with a mind to giving the characters room to breathe and consider what’s happening to them, letting them develop as the story progresses. Indeed, the film is very good at showing the internal world of the characters too.... even when they don’t have one foot in the spirit world. The directors do this sometimes by blurring out people and conversations in the background so that you can see them and you can just make out words and fragments of conversation, but the concentration of trying to hear what is going on pitched against the main visual of a person lost in thought, serves to push that inner struggle into the foreground... which is a nice way of doing things. I have seen things like that done in movies before, of course but, the way it’s used here is pretty useful and well executed.

What this means, of course, is that the film is something of a slow burn before it gets to the scares. Which is why the directors have done exactly what David Lynch did with the first scene in Wild At Heart and Steven Spielberg did in the first scene of Jurassic Park (and what Bernard Herrmann insisted he do with his overture music on the opening credits of Brian De Palma’s Sisters, for that matter)... which is show you just how bad things can get once the horror starts happening. So the opening of the film, set at a party, shows a really surprising double stabbing which is very strong... and jump starts the audience on the journey, pulling you in and allowing yourself the luxury of meeting the characters because you know something scary and, quite possibly brutal,  is eventually going to happen to them.

And the style of the shots is a little less frantic than most modern horror movies too. There’s obviously a lot of camera movement and there are some nice, jolting (but still quite smoothly tracked) moments when a person gets possessed but, there are also a lot of long held static shots in the movie, again so you can spend time with the characters without feeling propelled into the next fright already. And this approach can sometimes, well, kill a horror movie stone dead but, it’s done with a deft touch here and the script and performances are interesting enough that you won’t want to be leaving Mia's world in a hurry. And, in fact, there’s not much danger of that because, while stuff does notably happen to people other than the film’s central protagonist, the point of view stays with her for the majority of the story with very few deviations from that modus operandi.

And, yeah, I really liked it. The only caveat being that, after a certain incident right near the end of the film, you will have no problem figuring out what the final shot of the film is going to be... but again, it doesn’t matter because it’s a pretty good ending. So, Talk To Me... is nicely made, nicely performed, engaging and possesses a gripping, spooky atmosphere... definitely a strong recommendation from me, then.