It is safe to say that during their teenage years, most people have toyed with horror at parties and social gatherings, whether it is a house party or a campfire. For whatever reason, kids love to scare each other and test the courage of one another. This exciting Australian horror import attempts to frighten audiences with the scenario when such playfulness goes wrong. While the premise is relatively simple, writer/director Danny Philippou, who co-wrote Talk to Me with Bill Hinzman, and co-directed with Michael Philippou, have come up with a frightening and thrilling movie that will take audiences back to more innocent times when they played with dark matter they didn’t completely understand.
As often happens in our modern times, viral challenges permeate the internet and social media, and children and teenagers cannot resist. In Australia, the latest viral challenge is to grasp a supposedly dead person’s severed, mummified hand and allow the dead to communicate with them. Mia and her friends have access to such a hand and decide to face this challenge at a party to communicate with the non-living. And as it turns out, the hand is such a powerful gateway that it can allow an undead spirit to possess the body of anyone who allows it.
While the experience is initially frightening and disturbing, MIa (Sophie Wilde), who has recently lost her mother, sees this as an opportunity to reconnect with her deceased mom. However, this gateway to the spirit world proves dangerous as Mia and her friends connect with unsavory and menacing spirits craving to feed off the living.
I was impressed with the filmmaking of the Philippous. The writing is most solid and potent, as is the direction and realization of this utterly frightening experience for these kids. When things go south, they go horribly wrong, and Mia and her friends desperately attempt to right the things they have done so wrongly. The Philippous do a great job of seeing their vision to fruition, and the result is a fantastic horror film that is guaranteed to be lauded by horror fans.
Of course, the filmmakers could not pull this off on their own. The cast assembled for this movie is incredible, notably Sophie Wilde, who portrays Mia, a young lady in a lot of pain, coping with her mother’s death. The film also features great performances by Alexandra Jensen, Joe Bird, Otis Dhanji, Miranda Otto, and more.
Talk to Me is a movie that could be well enjoyed at home, but nothing compares to watching a horror flick in a darkened theater with many other horror fans reacting to the frights, thrills, drama, and occasional humor. This film is the feature debut of the Philippou brothers, and I hope this great start leads to more exciting work from these talented filmmakers.