Hal Kitchen
Like any national cuisine, though the dishes vary, each country’s horror has a distinct flavor to it and Australia has a rich history of horror from the centuries of native folklore to the cinematic explosion of Ozploitation movies (cataloged in the 2007 documentary Not Quite Hollywood). Today though, Australian horror has a new taste of sadness to its lurid brutality, as is shown by its brightest international star Jennifer Kent and her movies, or the landmark mockumentary horror Lake Mungo (one of the saddest and scariest horror movies ever made). This is where Talk to Me enters the frame, having been sold more as the newest horror sensation from distributor A24 rather than from Australia. I didn’t even know it was an Australian movie until I sat down in the theater (I have a terrible ear for accents and didn’t pick them up in the trailer). Talk to Me is shocking, brutal, exciting and unpredictable, but above all, it’s very sad, as much about depression and the inexorable pull of your own demons as anything else.
The film follows Mia (Sophie Wilde) and her friends as they start messing around with an embalmed hand one of them acquired from a friend that can supposedly channel the departed and allow them to temporarily possess the user. Against all expectations, it works and soon becomes a party trick, a cross between a Ouija board and hard drugs, each friend daring one another to take the spirits for another spin. It’s only a matter of time before things go awry and they’re left to deal with the consequences.
It all sounds very generic and yes, one of the film’s great strengths is its ability to fulfill genre conventions and give audiences the full-bloodied scares they’re after. The possession sequences themselves are intense, chilling, giddy fun, until they explode into gruesome, cringing violence that has you curling up in your seat. The waking nightmare continues from there and the film manages to sustain an intense atmosphere and deliver some moments of real skin-crawling terror.
The greatest strength of Talk to Me though lies in the cast and characterization. The early scenes introducing us to Mia and her friendship circle are brought to life by the young cast all of whom are fabulous in their roles, with a great performance too from Miranda Otto as one of their disapproving moms. The standout, though, is Wilde and she really is the glue that holds Talk to Me together. Whatever a film’s flaws, one totally convincing performance can sometimes keep it afloat and Wilde’s presence here really elevates the material. She’s a relatable, lovable goofball, cool and funny, but masking a deep sense of sadness, grief, guilt and insecurity that is drawn out of her as the film goes on. She wins your heart with the early chemistry, breaks it as she’s put through the wringer, and even hams it up beautifully in the possession scenes: it’s everything you could ask for in an iconic horror performance.
I said Talk to Me is about losing a battle to your persona demons, but the extent to which it is becomes apparent only in the second half, so it’s tough to really discuss the issues I have with this movie because they’re so localized later on. The first half is phenomenal, really knocks it out of the park. The second, sorta runs out of steam a bit and leaves you thinking, okay, so…where’re you going with this? And then when it’s over… wait, so that’s it? The second half isn’t bad, not at all. It’s intense, fast paced, gripping, slightly confusing, and vaguely anticlimactic. In classic horror fashion, the first half sets up a large friendship group of varying levels of likability and your appetite is well and truly whetted to see what sort of excruciating ways they’re going to get picked off one by one, right?
No. Not really.
In it’s second half, Talk to Me transforms into more of a feelings- and ideas-based horror and although I’m by no means against that, the way the story progresses feels just a bit unsure of itself. Despite its strong narrative hook, it doesn’t have much of a line to reel you in, and although Wilde does her all to keep us on side and bring the requisite emotional intensity, we start to lose the plot a bit, or at least I did. The film reaches around for a means to bring the film to some kind of payoff or emotional resolution and it doesn’t quite manage that I don’t think. Perhaps some will appreciate that lack of satisfaction, or else think it’s not there and find the ending appropriately rewarding. I still see the movie more as a reflection on its themes and a pretext for some spine-tingling scares more than it is a successfully told story and I would’ve really loved if directors Danny and Michael Phillippiou had found a way to fulfill more of those expectations.
Still, Talk to Me does succeed on enough fronts for me to recommend it, because those successes are resounding. Wilde gives a truly star-making turn and her co-stars are equally impressive, the Phillippiou brothers sustain a dark, moody atmosphere without forgetting to relish the visceral danger and sense of fun that is the life’s blood of this genre, and clearly someone working on the movie has excellent taste in alternative hip-hop too. It’s a dark, upsetting and brutal ride, if a slightly bumpy one that ends up a little more disposable than perhaps it would’ve liked, but it provides more than enough thrills to reward the curiosity of any horror fan.
