There has been a small trend throughout the last decade of horror that I suspect will grow more widespread as the years go by. Budding filmmakers who have taken to YouTube as a platform to publish their early work as they practice their craft have gone on to make some of the most original works of horror that the current era of the genre has seen. Whether talking about Dan Trachtenberg’s jump from making a Portal (2011) fan film to directing 10 Cloverfield Lane (2016) or David F. Sandberg directing the 2016 feature adaptation of his short film Lights Out (2013), YouTube has given a new generation of filmmakers the opportunity to showcase who they are and what they can do.
With their feature directorial debut Talk to Me, Danny and Michael Philippou, two brothers who have been making short films on YouTube for nearly a decade under the channel name RackaRacka, have firmly established themselves as filmmakers of their generation to remember going forward.
Talk to Me is constantly as viscerally disturbing as it is mysteriously intriguing. The Philippous have outdone themselves in their first feature by creating an experience that not even the most practiced minds in the horror genre could have dreamt of in their nightmares.
When Mia (Sophie Wilde) convinces her best friend Jade (Alexandra Jensen) to attend a gathering of their peers, she engages in a party trick that aims to connect participants to the dead. Acting as a supplier of the gothic experience, Joss (Chris Alosio) was passed down a ceramic hand covered in strange markings that allow those who hold it to see and temporarily become possessed by the dead.
No one is quite sure where the hand came from or whether it once belonged to a medium or a Satanist who had it chopped off as punishment for their heretic practices. What is known, though, is the ritual that allows the hand to continue connecting people to a spiritual plane.
Michael Philippou and Bill Hinzman co-wrote the film and were very wise to leave the exact origins of the hand a mystery. There is something very off-putting about not knowing where it came from, similar to how it is often always better to never get a true glimpse of a creature in a monster movie.
The rules themselves are fascinating enough on their own to hold the viewer’s interest. When she volunteers at the gathering, Mia’s body is restrained to a chair with her hands-free to hold the hand. Once a candle is lit to open a doorway, she is instructed by Hayley (Zoe Terakes), who acts as a dealer arranging each individual’s opportunity to interact with the hand, to say the phrase “Talk to me.” This allows Mia to make initial contact with a grisly-looking spirit who is only able to possess her once she utters the phrase “Let me in.”
The physicality of every actor during the possession scenes is terrifying in and of itself through the way in which their bodies are invaded, assaulting their senses. As their head shoots back, leaving them choking for air, their eyes go black, and every part of them that exists in their soul fades away. For brief moments, those watching are able to interact with the spirit before they have to rip the hand away and blow out the candle to bring the possessed person back and keep the spirit from existing within them permanently.
As an allegory for substance abuse and how it can corrupt people, the film excellently displays the highs and lows that come with addiction much better than films with vaguely similar premises like Flatliners (1990 and 2017).
Mia reacts to the experience like someone who tries a powerful drug for the first time and experiences a rapturous out-of-body experience. She gets hooked on it and does it over and over again until it begins to compromise her decision-making. She gives Jade’s younger brother Riley (Joe Bird) permission to try using the hand, and once the spirit he contacts turns out to be Mia’s deceased mother, she allows him to hold onto the hand longer than he should have. Riley is left horrifically disfigured in a scene that is utterly deranged, thanks in part to gruesome and gnarly sound design that leaves viewers unsure if they should be covering their eyes or their ears to hide from what transpires onscreen.
One of the Philippous’ greatest achievements in Talk to Me is their ability to craft horrifically gory scenes without having them come across as existing purely for shock value. Viewers wince at the pain that characters endure and sometimes inflict because the film does an incredible job of making them care about them.
Humorous and punchy dialogue makes the character relationships feel lived-in, like in a hilarious scene when Jade’s mother, Sue (Miranda Otto), cross-examines her children to try to determine whether they aim to throw a party while she is away for the evening. However, the relationships also carry a certain weight to them that raises the emotional stakes.
Mia partly blames her father for her mother’s suicide, which she feels could have been prevented. She’s been largely staying with Jade’s family because she finds it difficult to confront her father about the way that she feels. The fact that Mia is practically family to Jade makes the choices she makes as she essentially withdraws from using the hand all the more upsetting. As her mind becomes further corrupted as she begins seeing spirits without being connected to the hand, she destroys her relationships with the people she loves most.
Mia’s struggle with grief becomes entangled with the guilt she feels over what she allowed to happen to Riley. Her drive to save him from the spirits that aim to break his body apart until nothing remains is altruistic on the outside, yet deeply flawed because she is also doing it for the chance that it could bring her closer to her mother. She wants to know why her mother felt the need to leave her. The blame that she places on her father is a guise for the true blame and confusion that she puts on herself.
Wilde powerfully performs Mia’s tragic descent into madness and obsession with outward anxiety, which she is able to brilliantly balance with a clear sense of unwavering humanity. Mia is not a bad person. She cares so deeply about others that she sometimes struggles to make decisions that would most benefit them. This isn’t more evident than when she refuses to put a dying kangaroo out of its misery when she and Riley stumble upon it lying in the middle of the road at the beginning of the film. Even after Riley begs her to do it, she can’t bring herself to further harm the animal.
Nevertheless, as Mia becomes more of a danger to those around her, characters can’t help but give her the benefit of the doubt, even when it is clear that they shouldn’t. This is a minor issue that can be found scattered throughout Talk to Me. For example, when Mia is looking the most unhinged and dangerous, she visits Riley in the hospital and asks Sue if she can have a moment alone with him. Earlier, Sue had correctly blamed Mia for what happened even though she never found out about the specifics of the incident. It didn’t feel right that she would forgive her at that moment, let alone allow her to spend time alone with her son, who can’t seem to stop trying to harm himself every chance he gets.
Talk to Me excels at drawing out discomfort in viewers. It goes places that some may have difficulty watching, but it never loses sight of its story and characters. By the time it reaches its shocking conclusion, viewers are left in awe of what they have witnessed. The fear that the film inspires lingers with audiences long after they leave the theater, which is a sign of a magnificent work of horror.
The Philippous executed their vision in a nearly flawless fashion and achieved something that will inspire the next generation of filmmakers to pick up a camera and have as much fun creating as they surely did.
Review Courtesy of Evan Miller
Feature Image from A24 via Rotten Tomatoes
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