movie review of talk to me

Danny and Michael Philippou’s “Talk to Me” cleverly imagines a deadly craze that would easily sweep a generation—this horror movie’s plausibility is one of the freakiest things about it. The social media-feeding frenzy involves spiritual possession, made possible by grasping a ceramic-encased severed hand graffitied with names and symbols that suggest a long line of previous owners. Aussie teens like Mia ( Sophie Wilde ), Jade ( Alexandra Jensen ), and eventually Jade’s younger brother Riley ( Joe Bird ) are the latest players in such a game, which has them seeing dead people and giving them access to their tied-up bodies for 90 seconds, tops. When the spirits are “let in,” the teens suddenly shoot backward in a chair (the camera jolting back with them, the sound mix dropping out), and their pupils burst into a deep black. They shiver, choke, and asphyxiate as if they are gonna die. Meanwhile, their giddy friends surround them, filming. What a rush, as a YouTuber probably once said about eating Tide pods.

It’s a brilliant device for a modern horror story ( Daley Pearson is credited as the concept’s creator), and a franchise waiting to happen (in the case of horror, that often means a fruitful idea is intact, like when “ Final Destination ,” “ The Purge ,” and “ Saw ” first debuted.) “Talk to Me” could easily lead to a higher body count or a more directly spooky story in its sequels. But the game begins small here with a sincere pitch that aims for the gut—this first installment is about watching someone be possessed by horrible ideas of grief, and the damage their decisions inflict on their loved ones.

There are rules for how this dance with death can be done “safely,” and in a snappy montage that mixes partying with possessive play, we get a great sense of what extreme fun it can be for Mia, her friends, and the hand’s current owners, Hayley ( Zoe Terakes ) and Joss ( Chris Alosio ). But everything shifts in a nifty, nasty instant when one of the spirits that overtakes young Riley turns out to be Mia’s mother who died by suicide two years previous. Or at least the spirit claims to be. A freaked-out Mia forces this one communication with the dead to go on too long, putting Riley in a coma with many self-inflicted gashes on his head, an attempt by the spirit to kill his soul and fully control his body.

The second half of “Talk to Me” suffers from being yet another recent horror movie built on the trauma of loss, but it gets a special amount of layers from Sophie Wilde’s excellent performance. It’s not just about Mia trying to hold onto contact with her mother, but her need to not lose her new family, that of Jade, Riley, and their protective mother Sue (played with dry toughness by Miranda Otto ) in the process. We ache for Mia to be OK, especially since she’s such a bright personality—her constant yellow wardrobe always pops, and she has sweet scenes with Riley, like when the Philippous hard-cut to them early on bursting out Sia’s “Chandelier” during a night-time car ride. Wilde exemplifies a feverish, youthful need to balance both the pains of the past and a jeopardized future, and by trying to hack the hand’s magic, she isolates herself from reality in the process. “Talk to Me” could have been more rote without such voluminous work, but Wilde’s tragic interpretation—her big-screen debut—is one for the horror movie history books.

The Philippous rarely show us the TikToks or Snapchats that document these possessions, but we don’t need to see them: these freaky scenarios play out exactly as they might in real life, with writers Danny Philippou and Bill Hinzman allowing teens to be teens. When everything starts to fall apart—and souls are on the line—the characters just become more stubborn, their desperation making things worse and even more dangerous. “Talk to Me” has the bare wisdom of a coming-of-age tale, and while it conjures a few excellent moments of guffawing disbelief from the audience, it never talks down to the audience it wants to reflect. The Philippous’ filmmaking comes from YouTube (known there as RackaRacka), and their eye for this psychology is more savvy than it is cynical.

A good deal of nasty fun is scattered throughout “Talk to Me,” especially for fans of well-made blood-dribbling head wounds, sound design that makes you wince without relying on jump scares, and a tone that doesn’t play nice. Plus, the movie’s playful possession scenes get better and better (the movie’s young cast is impressive wriggling in those chairs, even if the possession make-up style looks familiar to so many other movies). But “Talk to Me” can bank too much of its quality on simply being a good pitch best fulfilled later—it’s hard not to see its gripping opening scene of terror, a one-shot through an unrelated, crowded party, as an isolated red herring not followed through by the rest of the film. The movie’s overall restraint is admirable, and best felt in the numerous moments when the camera holds on someone’s scared face, so we can build dread about what ghoul they are looking at. But “Talk to Me” risks holding back too much despite its excellent concept’s promise.

Whether or not we get more rounds with this hand of fate, “Talk to Me” lingers as a striking and confident directorial debut from the Philippous, whose penchant for hyper-active YouTube fight and prank vids is mostly evident in this movie’s emotional carnage. With such a playful send-up on a possession story, the Philippous have successfully crossed over into feature filmmaking, but it will take a little more genre ingenuity for us to keep talking about them.

Now playing in theaters.

Nick Allen is the former Senior Editor at RogerEbert.com and a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association.

Sophie Wilde as Mia
Joe Bird as Riley
Alexandra Jensen as Jade
Otis Dhanji as Daniel
Miranda Otto as Sue
Zoe Terakes as Hayley
Chris Alosio as Joss
Marcus Johnson as Max
Alexandria Steffensen as Rhea
Ari McCarthy as Cole
Sunny Johnson as Duckett

Cinematographer

Aaron McLisky
Bill Hinzman
Danny Philippou
Cornel Wilczek
Michael Philippou

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Critic’s Pick

‘Talk to Me’ Review: Letting the Wrong One In

A bereaved young woman falls under the spell of a dangerous artifact in this vibrant and poignant horror debut.

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A close up of a woman, eyes closed, tears streaming down her face.

By Jeannette Catsoulis

Steeped in yearning and chockablock with shocks, “Talk to Me,” the first feature from the Australian filmmaking brothers Danny Philippou and Michael Philippou, is a horror movie huddled tightly around a story of filial grief. The result is an enduring melancholy that no amount of ghouls or gore can entirely dispel.

A shifting weave of tones and textures, the movie owes much of its potency to Sophie Wilde’s continually evolving lead performance as Mia, an anxious teenager barely coping with her mother’s death a year earlier. Unable to connect with her emotionally distant father (Marcus Johnson), Mia has created a surrogate family with her best friend, Jade (Alexandra Jensen), and Jade’s younger brother, Riley (a remarkable Joe Bird). Yet Mia remains alienated, hanging awkwardly apart from her raucous, thrill-seeking friends, wearing her bereavement like a scarlet letter.

An opportunity to belong arises at a rambunctious house party, where a new game involving an embalmed hand — frozen in the handshake position and supposedly chopped from a long-dead medium — is being played. The rules are simple: Grip the hand, say “Talk to me,” and a ghost will appear. If you are then brave enough to tender an invitation, the entity will obligingly possess you while your guffawing friends, smartphones at the ready, gleefully capture its disturbing, sometimes embarrassing behavior. The spirit’s move-in is easy; the eviction is where things get sticky.

Distinguished by wonderfully gooey practical effects and deeply distressing visual jolts (especially when young Riley falls under the hand’s malignant influence), “Talk to Me” has a hurtling energy that’s often violent but never purposefully cruel. The film’s ideas are not novel, or even fully formed (the narrative has more holes than a lace doily); yet by choosing simplicity over specifics, the filmmakers free themselves from the weight of words and open up space for a mood of intense disquiet and unusual sensitivity. Their empathy for Mia — whose longing for connection has blinded her to the game’s deceptions and dangers — is unexpectedly touching.

Unsettlingly attuned to familiar teenage behavior (the movie’s scariest aspect may be its plausibility), “Talk to Me” refuses to view the youngsters’ addiction to the hand, and the online attention it attracts, with satirical remove: Even the film’s jokes feel strangely tender. And thanks to the snaking skills of the cinematographer Aaron McLisky, the movie’s action — like a stunning opening sequence that caused my jaw to drop — is swift without seeming slapdash. Scurrying excitedly through rowdy crowd scenes, McLisky’s camera nimbly differentiates key players, keeping our eyes on the plot and chaos at bay.

Spooky and sad, kinetic and occasionally clumsy, “Talk to Me” is far from perfect but close to fine. Watching Mia enjoy a fleeting moment of joy as she and Riley belt out Sia’s “Chandelier” in a car before screeching to a halt beside a mortally injured kangaroo, we sense a mounting inevitability. Wherever this journey is taking her, we can’t help but feel she’s been heading there for a very long time.

Talk to Me Rated R for dog-snogging, toe-sucking and stabbing-stabbing-stabbing. Running time: 1 hour 34 minutes. In theaters.

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Review: You have to hand it to ‘Talk to Me,’ a gripping thriller about love and loss

A woman sitting in an upholstered chair grips a ceramic model of a hand sitting on a table in front of her

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If Regan MacNeil were to go skittering backward down the stairs today, would her onlookers scream in terror or whip out their phones — or both? The question comes to mind more than once during “Talk to Me,” a viscerally effective supernatural freakout in which demonic possession isn’t just an abomination but an addiction, a recreational pastime and sometimes even a viral event.

In the movie’s most pleasurably disturbing sequence, several thrill-seeking teenagers take turns shaking hands with the devil, conjuring malevolent spirits for a brief spell and videoing the results for kicks, laughs and internet posterity. Better judgment be damned; the power of likes compels them.

The idea that kids these days might rent out their bodies and risk their souls for 90 seconds at a time is so darkly funny and spookily resonant, it’s a bit of a letdown that this sharp, bristling Australian thriller doesn’t take it much further. What the concept does establish from the outset — starting with a squirmy house-party prologue, featuring much stabbing of flesh and waving of phones — is a keen sense of the dark side of youthful anomie, and the ways even an ostensibly good time can go lethally awry. Danny and Michael Philippou, twin brothers making a slick and assured feature directing debut, know that a casual hangout isn’t always just a casual hangout, especially when there are lingering rivalries and unhealed traumas festering just beneath the surface.

Purely in terms of latent emotional volatility, the most troubled and troubling character in “Talk to Me” is its teenage protagonist, Mia (the excellent newcomer Sophie Wilde), who’s hiding more than her share of scars beneath her warm smile and gregarious demeanor. Since her mother’s untimely death not too long ago, Mia spends less time at home and more time with her best friend, Jade (Alexandra Jensen), and Jade’s younger brother, Riley (Joe Bird, in a superb and surprising performance). It’s both telling and touching that one of the first times we see Mia, she’s giving Riley a ride home, with both of them belting along to Sia‘s “Chandelier” on the radio. The two are practically surrogate siblings; unlike Jade, with whom Riley bickers constantly, Mia is the cool big sister he wishes he had.

But then the car stops, its headlights revealing a mortally wounded kangaroo — a regionally specific piece of roadkill, yes, but otherwise an all-too-familiar harbinger of horror-movie disaster. Before long, Jade, Riley and Mia find themselves at a party, where they’re sucked into a game centered on a creepily disembodied hand, now embalmed and encased in ceramic, that’s rumored to have once belonged to a medium with the power to conjure the dead. The hand’s rowdy present owners (Zoe Terakes and Chris Alosio) lay out the rules: With a few magic words (“Talk to me,” “I let you in”) and a firm, willing handshake, each player can invite a spirit into their body, with deliciously freaky results. But the invitation must be revoked in 90 seconds or less, lest the possession risk becoming permanent.

A woman screams, her palm against the glass

It’s a nifty, hooky premise, one that soon gives rise to that inspired recreational montage. The grotesque prosthetic effects and nerve-shredding sound design are first rate; they’re also a calculatedly showy distraction. Beneath all the creepy pupil dilations and ghoulish makeup, the Philippou brothers, working from a script by Danny Philippou and Bill Hinzman, maintain a strong grip on the group’s emotional dynamics, layering on the minor misunderstandings and petty jealousies while maneuvering their characters into position. By the time Mia comes face to face with what may be the spirit of her late mom, what began as a game has tilted into a full-blown hallucinatory nightmare.

The specifics, violent and terrifying, are best left for you to discover. Suffice to say that Mia is hurled into a maelstrom of guilt, terror and desperation that finds her suddenly estranged from a family — Jade’s — that had come to feel like her own. To some extent, “Talk to Me” is very much about this blurring of emotional and relational boundaries. With parents and children so often at odds, whether it’s Jade arguing with her protective single mother (a fine Miranda Otto) or Mia walling herself off from her grieving dad (Marcus Johnson), real family is often where you find it. The intimacy of friendship becomes its own benign form of possession, a willing exchange of souls.

These are fascinating, even moving ideas, even if the Philippou brothers don’t always have them entirely under control. In its harrowing closing stretch, the narrative begins to unravel in ways both effective and not; as Mia struggles to appease or defeat the demonic forces in her midst, it’s not always clear if the movie is dramatizing or succumbing to her break with reality.

But even when “Talk to Me” flirts with incoherence, Wilde pulls it back from the brink. More than just a great scream queen, she makes vivid sense of Mia’s ravaged emotions, revealing her to be a captive less to the spirit realm than to her own inconsolable grief. She’s the movie’s revelation, hands down.

'Talk to Me'

Rating: R, for strong/bloody violent content, some sexual material and language throughout Running time: 1 hour, 35 minutes Playing: Starts July 28 in general release

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Talk to Me Reviews

The new A24 horror movie delivers without relying on jumpscares or devastating you emotionally.

Full Review | Nov 27, 2024

This movie will inhabit your very being.

Full Review | Oct 18, 2024

The Philippou brothers conjure up a delightfully devious horror in Talk to Me, which excels when they lean into intense violence and the eeriness of the supernatural.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Sep 3, 2024

There are ways and means to push a horror’s lead to its edge, but the writing choices make Mia cripplingly unable to do much to “fight” the antagonistic supernatural forces.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | Jul 9, 2024

RackaRacka has crafted a horror film for the ages that will be remembered in ten years as one of the most important in the realm of independent horror.

Full Review | Original Score: A | Mar 6, 2024

The first half is as compelling as it gets, effectively conjuring horrifying images from the underworld and, scarier yet, the troubled souls of the bereaved.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 7, 2024

The Philippouses wisely stay within their comfort zone, setting the film in their native Australia, though I'm half-convinced the entire reason they shot there was so they could have an excuse to use a kangaroo for one key scene.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 25, 2024

The central character of this film, Mia, is played convincingly by Sophie Wilde. Her performance is a major strength of this movie. I think most horror movies are overrated, and that's the case with this one, too. It isn't great, but it's good.

Full Review | Original Score: B | Jan 24, 2024

Couple that nihilistic slant wherein faith becomes a tool for evil with a desire to let the characters' actions dictate the plot rather than the other way around and you get an effective thriller that's unafraid to embrace the darkness of its premise.

Full Review | Original Score: 8/10 | Jan 19, 2024

...the goal always seemed to be the desecration of the temple of Me...

Full Review | Jan 5, 2024

A terrifying allegory to bad decisions we all make when we are young.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Dec 9, 2023

It’s refreshing to see a transmasc actor play a pivotal part of Talk to Me without having their gender identity exploited.

Full Review | Original Score: B | Dec 7, 2023

Where the reactionary slashers of the ’70s and ’80s exploited their young audience’s appetite for sex and effectively punished them for it, Talk to Me is a thoughtful attempt to figure out what really frightens teenagers today.

Full Review | Nov 16, 2023

Everything an audience might want from a horror movie is here: original ideas, quality acting, jump scares, rising dread, and a powerful sense of allegory.

Full Review | Original Score: 8/10 | Nov 14, 2023

Talk to Me is uncompromising and emotionally brutal, it’s gross and smart, and I haven’t been able to get it out of my mind since I saw it.

Full Review | Nov 10, 2023

Disembodied hands have long been a mainstay in horror cinema, and it’s to the credit of the Philippou brothers that they’ve come up with a unique approach to the errant appendage.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Oct 28, 2023

...it is easy to label [Talk To Me] as one of 2023's best horror films.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | Oct 18, 2023

The majority of the feature demonstrates the capacity of the Phillipou's to be at the service of their characters and for their fabrication of a tense environment that is more and more desperate. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Oct 5, 2023

It works like gangbusters until it really doesn't. Still, there is something to be said for a near miss that leaves you somewhat intrigued for what the filmmakers will do next.

Full Review | Oct 2, 2023

It has a good rhythm and curated visual work - characters that appear slightly blurred, dark lighting, overwhelming close-ups - that contributes to creating a disturbing atmosphere throughout the film. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 29, 2023

Umbrella Entertainment

Summary When a group of friends discover how to conjure spirits using an embalmed hand, they become hooked on the new thrill, until one of them goes too far and unleashes terrifying supernatural forces.

Directed By : Danny Philippou, Michael Philippou

Written By : Danny Philippou, Bill Hinzman, Daley Pearson

Where to Watch

Ari mccarthy, hamish phillips, kit erhart-bruce, sarah brokensha, jayden davison, sunny johnson, sophie wilde, marcus johnson, kidaan zelleke, james oliver, jett gazley, alex varolli, alexandra jensen, helene philippou, possessed girl on phone.

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Jude turner, possessed boy on phone, zoe terakes, chris alosio, otis dhanji, critic reviews.

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‘talk to me’ review: mingling with the spirit world brings bone-chilling shocks in australian horror debut.

Twin brothers Danny and Michael Philippou springboard from their popular YouTube channel into features with this tale of possession for the viral-video generation, picked up by A24.

By David Rooney

David Rooney

Chief Film Critic

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Entertainment /
Movie Review
Talk To Me is a potent dose of unrelenting teen horror

A familiar premise is elevated by a combination of brutal violence and urgent pacing.

By Andrew Webster , an entertainment editor covering streaming, virtual worlds, and every single Pokémon video game. Andrew joined The Verge in 2012, writing over 4,000 stories.

Share this story

A still photo from the horror movie Talk To Me.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: a group of high school kids gets their hands on a cursed occult object, and after some fun and games, they end up being terrorized by a presence from the other side. It’s not the most original premise. But in Talk To Me — the directorial debut from brothers Danny and Michael Philippou, best known for their YouTube channel — it takes on a new urgency and ferocity with a story that races to its bloody, brutal conclusion without letting up.

The occult object in question is an embalmed hand that supposedly has the power to let people see, and be possessed by, the spirits of dead folk. The process is straightforward: you grab the hand, say “talk to me” to summon a random specter, and then say “I let you in” to invite them to inhabit your body. It’s creepy stuff, and easy to repeat, making it the ideal thing for viral video fame. Suddenly, high school kids in Australia are watching videos of what appear to be possessions, sometimes ending in a splash of blood. Of course, it’s just a hoax, right?

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Mia (Sophie Wilde) first experiences the effects of the ritual at a party, and she instantly becomes hooked. Possession, it seems, is as addictive as a drug — especially for teens going through a tough time, where being out of body for a bit is a welcome change. This is Mia, who is grieving the loss of her mother, and who clings desperately to her friends Jade (Alexandra Jensen) and Riley (Joe Bird) to stave off the loneliness. Not long after her first experience, she tries it again and — despite objections — lets Riley join in, too.

One important part of the ritual is timing. Let the spirit stay in for too long, and it won’t want to leave. Her inability to stop going back for more possessions, combined with this very strict rule, ends up leaving Mia haunted by terrifying visions, while she’s also trying to save her friend from a living nightmare.

What follows is a fairly standard ghost story, but one that’s elevated by urgency and brutality. Seriously, when bad things happen in this movie, they’re really bad — “I had to look away from the screen” bad. Possessed kids brutalizing themselves, horrifying visions of the afterlife, and deaths that, even when you see them coming, are so violent you can’t help but wince. That’s perhaps to be expected from a film helmed by the proprietors of a YouTube channel full of goofy and gory videos. But the Philippou brothers show a remarkable amount of restraint in Talk To Me . There’s more to the violence than pure shock value; it punctuates the story, which — once it gets going — moves at an unrelenting pace. The twists and turns aren’t necessarily all that surprising, in retrospect, but they come at you so quickly that it feels like you barely have a minute to catch your breath.

If nothing else, Talk To Me is a shockingly competent debut — and not at all what I expected from a horror movie made by YouTube stars. It may be a movie about viral videos — but the film itself is much more than an extended YouTube skit.

This review is based on a screening at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival. Talk To Me doesn’t currently have a premiere date, but it’s reportedly been acquired by A24 for distribution .

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'Talk to Me' Review: This Wild Horror Debut Is a Smash Hit for a Reason

Talk to Me is a frequently smashing good horror film from Danny and Michael Philippou.
Sophie Wilde gives a strong performance even when the film descends into chaos.
Some elements of the film can ultimately feel a little underdeveloped.

This review was originally part of our coverage for the 2023 Sundance Film Festival.

Sometimes, horror can be downright nasty. This doesn’t just refer to the gore, but the way it is all used. In Talk To Me , the feature debut from YouTubers turned directors Danny and Michael Philippou , possession becomes a way by which to pulverize their characters . It is these moments that are the highlights of the experience in all their stomach-churning viscera. As they get more outrageous, it comes at the audience with brutal and bloody cinematic madness that makes the most of the chaos that unfolds before you.

When a group of friends discover how to conjure spirits using an embalmed hand, they become hooked on the new thrill, until one of them goes too far and unleashes terrifying supernatural forces.

Even when the film isn’t able to maintain this same kinetic energy and is often more of a spectacle than it is fully scary, the ride along the way can still be a lot of fun. It has drawn some comparisons to director Sam Rami ’s Evil Dead which, while not entirely off base, do overstate its creativity ever so slightly. However, when the film grabs hold of you in a couple of standout sequences, there is still something delightful in how it embraces the depravity without blinking a bloody eye .

What Is 'Talk to Me' About?

Operating in proximity to the transmissible curse subgenre , Talk to Me begins with a man wandering through a party looking for his friend who is not acting like himself these days. When he finds him, we see that he is clearly having a really rough time. More than just a bad trip of some kind, he subsequently kills his friend and then himself while shocked partygoers record on their phones. We then meet Mia, played by Sophie Wilde in her feature debut, who is drawn to taking part in a ritual that allows you to let the spirit of someone who has passed on into your body. It is like a supernatural Russian roulette as you have no control whatsoever over who may come knocking or what they may want to take from you once they do.

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This game is what all the cool kids are doing these days as we see videos of them gathering at parties to take in the chaos of the supernatural. All you have to do is grab hold of an embalmed hand without letting go, say the right words, and your body is no longer yours. The only rule is that it must not go on for any longer than ninety seconds or these spirits may want to stay around forever. When Sophie tries it out for herself, it works exactly as explained, and she is thrilled by the experience. She and her friends then decide to do it more, testing fate each time without a care in the world about the inevitable looming consequences .

It is these possession sequences that are the heart of the film and where it is most engaging. While more creepy in an over-the-top fashion than it is fully scary, the flair with which it brings them to life is quite fantastic . Observing the various characters vanish while something else takes over their bodies is played with an eye for the extreme. In one moment, a character begins mocking the sexual activity of another before having what is essentially a supernatural orgasm before making out with the dog. You know, just fun party times for everyone to enjoy.

'Talk to Me' Gestures Toward Deeper Ideas Though Works Best as a Brutal Horror Film

When he subsequently awakens, he is incredibly embarrassed though everyone else laughs and gawks at his misery while posting videos online to share with others as he runs out of the room. There is possibly a light undercurrent about what the film is trying to say about how youth culture is wrapped up in vapidity, but that is the least interesting aspect of the experience . What makes it all work are the thrills that come from the characters peering into the great beyond and discovering something is peering back. For Mia, this becomes personal and ties into familial horrors from her past that she begins to question her present understanding of.

This more serious element of the story can feel like it is a little underdeveloped , but it doesn’t cause too many issues once everything begins to get really gruesome. If anything, the way Mia has repressed her past and how it then gets brought back to the surface makes it all the more menacing. Her growing realization can only come after a truly grim sequence for which she is partly the cause. Without spoiling the revelation of who it is and what happens, a younger character close to Mia becomes grievously injured after he stayed under the control of a spirit for too long at her urging when she recognized who it was that had taken over.

'Talk to Me's Best Scene Was Shot in Just 30 Minutes

Sophie Wilde helped horror break into the awards space this year with an EE Rising Star Award nomination at the BAFTAs for her work in the A24 hit.

There is an audacity to this sequence as the film pushes it further and further. It goes on for so long that you wonder how this unlucky character’s head is even attached, let alone whether he is still alive . From there forward, even as the story can be a bit shaky at times, just taking in the fallout of this moment holds it together. In particular, the growing fear that Mia has about her past and her future ensures the excesses remain grounded enough to keep you engaged.

Wilde's Performance and a Great Conclusion Elevate 'Talk to Me'

Are there still some elements where the story could have benefited from a bit more nuance? Absolutely. Does it really matter when a character becomes possessed and begins sucking on the foot of another? Probably not. There is that interesting push and pull where the film seems to want to say something more while still wrapping itself up in the spectacle. The way this culminates in the conclusion actually works rather well, as we see the tragic results of all of Mia’s desperate attempts to find closure and set things right . She carries a heavy weight on her shoulders that no one else on this plane of being is able to understand or help her with.

Throughout all of this, Wilde gives a strong performance , speaking volumes with just her physicality as we begin to understand when Mia is herself and when she very much isn’t. When the tables become turned in an absolutely killer final shot, this all pays off and smooths over any of the problems that may have arisen on the path it took to get there. Whether you can stomach it enough to make it all the way will depend on the viewer, but Talk To Me has plenty that promises to capture the souls of horror sickos looking for a sinister spectacle.

Talk to Me is a smash horror hit for a reason, packing plenty of gruesome moments even if other aspects can feel slightly underdeveloped.

The standout central scene where a character is nearly pulverized is terrifying and brutal in all the best ways.
Sophie Wilde gives a strong performance, holding the film together even when it threatens to come apart.
The ending ties everything together rather nicely, leaving us adrift in a great beyond from which there is no escape.
While it gestures at more weighty ideas, Talk to Me doesn't really develop these ideas as much as it could or should have.
It could have benefited from more nuance rather than the repetition that it occasionally falls into.

Talk to Me is now available to stream on Paramount+ in the U.S.

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Movie Reviews

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COMMENTS

Talk to Me movie review & film summary (2023) - Roger Ebert
Jul 28, 2023 · Danny and Michael Philippou’s “Talk to Me” cleverly imagines a deadly craze that would easily sweep a generation—this horror movie’s plausibility is one of the freakiest things about it. The social media-feeding frenzy involves spiritual possession, made possible by grasping a ceramic-encased severed hand graffitied with names and ...
Talk to Me (2023) - Rotten Tomatoes
Oct 18, 2024 Full Review William Stottor Loud and Clear Reviews The Philippou brothers conjure up a delightfully devious horror in Talk to Me, which excels when they lean into intense violence and ...
‘Talk to Me’ Review: Letting the Wrong One In - The New York ...
Jul 27, 2023 · Steeped in yearning and chockablock with shocks, “Talk to Me,” the first feature from the Australian filmmaking brothers Danny Philippou and Michael Philippou, is a horror movie huddled ...
'Talk to Me' review: A24's latest shocker grabs you - Los ...
Jul 27, 2023 · In the movie’s most pleasurably disturbing sequence, several thrill-seeking teenagers take turns shaking hands with the devil, conjuring malevolent spirits for a brief spell and videoing the ...
Talk to Me - Movie Reviews - Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes, home of the Tomatometer, is the most trusted measurement of quality for Movies & TV. The definitive site for Reviews, Trailers, Showtimes, and Tickets
Talk to Me Reviews - Metacritic
Jul 28, 2023 · Although the movie’s energies dip slightly toward its end, when Mia’s plan to rid the world of the cursed hand requires superhuman acts of strength and derring-do, Talk to Me delivers a series of slash-and-burn shocks that last far longer than 90 seconds.
Movie Review: Horror flick 'Talk to Me' is a hand-some high ...
Jul 26, 2023 · Directed by the brothers from a script by Danny Philippou and Bill Hinzman, “Talk to Me” is modern and yet ancient, with just enough jump-cuts and zombies and dread, but not too much. It also downshifts out of madness in the final third to explore loss and guilt just when most films would ramp up the running-from-scary-guys part.
'Talk to Me' Review: Bone-Chilling Australian Possession Horror
Feb 21, 2023 · ‘Talk to Me’ Review: Mingling With the Spirit World Brings Bone-Chilling Shocks in Australian Horror Debut. Twin brothers Danny and Michael Philippou springboard from their popular YouTube ...
Talk To Me review: a potent dose of unrelenting teen horror ...
Jan 31, 2023 · Talk To Me, a horror movie that premiered at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival, is the directorial debut of YouTube stars Danny and Michael Philippou. ... This review is based on a screening at the ...
'Talk to Me' Review: This Wild Horror Debut Is a Smash Hit ...
Apr 1, 2024 · Talk to Me is a frequently smashing good horror film from Danny and Michael Philippou.; Sophie Wilde gives a strong performance even when the film descends into chaos. Some elements of the film ...