Having cut their teeth on YouTube, with a string of wildly popular comic horror skits, twin brothers Danny and Michael Philippou transition now to cinema like undead ducks to the waters of the River Styx. While zane and chutzpah have long set apart the pair’s antics, who could have guess that the makers of “VIOLENT Zombie Fatalities (!)” would prove so adept when it came to the weaving of complex and surprising narrative webs? Certainly, theirs is as rampantly thrilling a debut as was Jordan Peele’s Get Out back in 2017. RackaRacka fans should, however, take heed: Talk to Me is no laughing matter.
As is the contemporary vogue – see also Smile and M3GAN – the story here is pleasingly to the point. This is to the benefit of both character and adrenaline. Recalled are Flatliners and the classic 1902 W. W. Jacobs’ short story The Monkey’s Paw. An embalmed hand, once attached to the arm of a psychic, gifts holders the ability to communicate with the dead. They need only proclaim ‘talk to me’ in the presence of a lit candle. It’s a buzz. To enhance the hit with a rush of possession, say: ‘I let you in’. Onlookers film the hilarity on smartphones, the craze then shared on Snapchat groups. Allow the possession to stretch past ninety seconds, however, and the bridge between life and that after is ruptured. There is little the demonic deceased will not do force the living into their own pit of endless suffering.
Grass-rooted to the Philippou’s own urban backyard – the film shot in Adelaide – Talk to Me reaps the rewards of a committed local ensemble. To the central role of scarred outsider Mia, Sophie Wilde brings a terrific otherworldly energy, her awkward periphery hovering deftly sidestepping the trappings of female genre tropes. Mia’s grief and unresolved torment grounds the emotional heft of the film – the title plays on the pitfalls of avoidance – and lays the seeds for a core theme of parental absence. Mia is complex, messy and often hard to like. It’s a tough role and Wilde nails it. As does newcomer Joe Bird, whose Riley holds his own in the grand lineage of Linda Blair. Miranda Otto drifts in and out as Riley’s mother, Sue, with Alexandra Jensen playing his sister, a grounded mirror to Mia.
Each character is pulled through the wringer in a film delightfully wedded to the grungy potency of practical, as opposed to computer generated, effects. Perhaps this is the natural path for directors whose background is in taught YouTube budgets. It pays off. Scenes of heightened gore are limited for maximum effect throughout, with the shock value all the more intense for the stringency. When they do land, the film’s stabs of peak horror are enough to spur viewers into audible gasps, hands driven either to covering open mouths or haunted eyes. Between such terrors, there is no let up to be found. The tone is oppressive. A rot forms early in the film, right at the core, and lusts outward as mildew to every corner of the screen. It is the film’s sensory response to its own thematic interest in notions of peer pressure. An allegory for the pernicious dangers of drug sharing amongst teens sits a mere scratch beneath the surface.
As the climax builds, a synthetic score by Cornel Wilczek ramps up the claustrophobia of a film set, very much knowingly, almost exclusively in the rain and dark. A script by Danny Philippou and Bill Hinzman makes hay with wrongfootings and final act twists, all the while looping things back to where they began. It’s incredibly tightly written material and far smarter than the average teen horror. Hands come in pairs, of course, so a second round must be forthcoming. It must, right? We can but hope.