Talk to Me Review

Talk to Me is an Australian horror film and the directional debut of the Philippou Twins. It’s a film that had a lot of buzz around it since its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival.

Mia (Sophie Wilde) is a teenage girl who is still grieving for her mother who passed away two years prior. When Mia agrees to go to a party with her friend Jade (Alexandra Jensen) she gets involved with a viral dare. If people hold a porcelain hand and say “talk to me,” they can see ghosts. Mia becomes addicted to the hand. However, at a second party, when Jade’s younger brother, Riley (Joe Bird) uses the hand and becomes possessed.

Talk to Me has played at numerous high-profile festivals like Sundance, Berlin, and SXSW and A24 snapped up the US distribution rights. This is enough to grab the interest of any film fan. It was a film that had traditional horror thrills and substance for the elevated horror crowd.

Talk to Me takes on four major themes: grief, mental health, viral chasing, and addiction. Mia’s a character who has never gotten over her mother’s death, resulting in her falling into a deep depression. Mia was distant from her father, and she ended up spending more time with Jade and her family. But even with them, Mia was a dejected figure who was just drifting through life. Mia ended up becoming addicted to the dare because it acted as a way for her to communicate with her mother, and using the hand became an escape from her life. Wilde was great at playing this sad and dejected character who pushed people away and got pushed away.

The dare itself was portrayed like it was a party drug. All the users got a thrill like it was nitrous oxide, but like using any recreational drug, holding the hand for too long can be dangerous. The scenes of the teens using the hand were filmed like it was a party film where characters had fun with drinking and drug taking. The dare in the film mirrored real-life viral crazes where people did dangerous tasks like the Tide Pod Challenge just so they can get digital clout.

The main focus of the film was the mental health theme. Talk to Me had similarities to Paramount’s Smile which also looked at the supernatural being a metaphor for mental health and personal trauma. Talk to Me handled this theme a lot better than Smile. This was due to the fact that Mia was already suffering from mental health issues and seeing ghosts just amplified them. Mia’s sense of reality was blurred by the ghosts and there was a question were the ghosts manipulating Mia or was she acting out her darkest desires?

Even the title and main phrase of the film were a reference to the film’s mental health themes. Phrases like “talk to me” or some variety of them are used to get people to talk about their issues. It was more than just a call for the ghosts to communicate with the living.

Talk to Me was also an effective horror film. There was a great horror sequence. The film had a great prologue that set up the mental health theme and setting up the power the hand can have on someone. The moment when one character held onto the hand for too long was a truly great horror sequence since it was violent and genuinely shocking because of what was happening. This scene will serve as a great example of how to make violence scary and not done just for shock value.

Talk to Me was a great debut horror film that worked as a character-driven drama and exploration of mental health and grief as well as a ghost story. Hopefully, we will get to see more from everyone involved.