Talk to Me

 Danny and Michael Philippou the twin filmmaker brothers, who started their movie career shooting backyard wrestling matches in their native Australia and honing their skills crewing on Jenifer Kents modern horror classic the Babadook from 2014. Have released their first feature film and boy what a debut it is. Having graduated from the school of YouTube, their popular channel RackaRacka has over six million subscribers. Talk to Me is a pretty remarkable genre movie which packs a powerful punch. 

 Following Mia (Sophie Wilde) a seventeen year old misfit, still coming to terms with the death of her mother two years prior. Mia’s best friend Jade (Alexandra Jensen), her younger brother Riley (Joe Bird)  and Jade’s boyfriend Daniel (Otis Dhanji) all make for a likable group.

 Plot wise the less you know the better but in a nutshell… Viral videos are being spread around the youngsters of this small Adalade community, which seem to depict some strange goings on. When our main characters are invited to a party to participate in the bizarre ritual and see first hand for themselves if the videos are fake or not. Mia finds herself volunteering first, hoping to impress the hosts of the party Hayley (Zoe Terakes) and Joss (Chris Alosio) but as might be expected things don’t go according to plan. The device that brings on the creepy, is a ceramic hand, said to have been severed from a medium who was legitimately able to communicate with the dead. By grabbing the hand in candlelight and uttering the words “Talk to me” the volunteer is able to see a spirit.

Perhaps you are thinking that doesn’t sound particularly unique? It’s true familiar ground is trod and tropes from other genre movies particularly It Follows (2014) might make you think you are on familiar ground. What Talk to Me does so effectively is bring an energy that feels fresh and unpredictable. The dynamic of the main players is always believable and this young cast of relative unknowns do a fantastic job in making the audience care about each of them. Miranda Otto (Lord of the Rings) lends some gravitas as Jade and Riley’s mum, Sue. Along with Marcus Johnson as Mia’s dad Max being pretty much the only “living” adult presence in the film. Highlighting a generation obsessed with their phones and social media accounts in sometimes very cruel ways the Philippou”s have made a movie which serves as a snapshot for the youth of today.  Also remarkably amongst all this upsetting behavior there are some genuinely funny moments particularly in the middle set piece of the movie. The horror though always stays in the foreground and this darkly amusing moment is punctuated by a very difficult watch through your hands sequence which brings the movie into a whole new realm.

Believe the hype on this one. With slightly more pace than Ari Aster’s Hereditary from 2018, Talk to Me offers a similar brutality and heralds the arrival of important new voices in the filmmaking community. I, for one, am looking forward to what these Aussie  twins do next