Talk to Me

Directors: Danny Philippou, Michael Philippou (Australia). Year of Release: 2022

A party in Adelaide. A bloke with longish hair goes from person to person asking if anyone has seen Duckett. Many of them have no idea who Duckett is, and those who do haven’t seen him. We learn that the long-haired bloke is called Cole. Someone points Cole in the direction of one of the bedrooms. The door is locked but they break down the door. On the other side, they find the slumped body of a boy, presumably Cole’s younger brother Duckett.

Duckett is in a bad state, but then he jumps up and rushes into the living room where the main party is going on. Everyone breaks off from what they’ve been doing and start to video him on their mobile phones. Cole catches up with his brother and tries to calm him down, stopping only briefly to tell everyone to stop filming. As Cole’s head is turned, Duckett grabs a knife and stabs him in the stomach before repeatedly slashing himself.

Cut to: a depressed looking Mia. It’s her mother’s anniversary (later we learn that it’s 2 years since her mother took too many sleeping pills – possibly deliberately), and her dad is being his usual distant self. So Mia pops over to her friend Jade’s house, where she spends most of her time. But Jade is spending all her time online chatting with her new boyfriend Daniel, and isn’t paying her much attention. It doesn’t help that Daniel is Mia’s ex.

Having seen an online video, Mia drags Jade and Daniel – and Jade’s younger brother Riley to a party where there’s going to be some sort of séance. Party hosts Hayley and Joss bring out a porcelain hand, which they say is the real hand of a dead medium which has been encased with plaster. The hand is covered in graffiti, and is a cluster of grasping fingers, much like the John Heartfield picture 5 Fingers has the Hand.

Joss explains that they’ll fasten someone to a chair using a belt, then light a candle. The victim must then say “Talk to me” to summon up a spirit. If they are brave enough, they should then say “I let you in”, and the spirit will possess them. Before 90 seconds are up, they must let go of the hand, and someone must blow out the candle, otherwise … something or other. This isn’t a film that concentrates on the details.

It was around this point that the film started to lose me. Things happened with increasing levels of implausibility. Of course you needed to say exactly those words. Of course, you had 90 minutes – not 89, not 91. Of course, the person who is possessed does actually see the decaying body whoever it was that was possessing them. And yet all the time, I had the nagging feeling: “but how did they know”.

I am perfectly aware that that way madness lies – that in many films, you just have to accept the conventions, and not think too hard. And I guess if I were already gripped by what was happening, that’s exactly what I’d have done. But there was just something about it – maybe the enforced excitement of teenagers with too much access to their parents’ liquor cabinet – which made me just not care about the protagonists or what happened to them.

So, it may very well be not the film, it’s me. Mia is a sympathetic figure, and the film is doing something interesting. looking at how she comes to terms with her mother’s death and her father’s distraction. Mia volunteers to be the first person to clutch the hand, partly because Hayley has been sneering at her all night. When she sees a decaying woman, her feeling afterwards is one of elation, as if she’d just tried a powerful drug. She wants to do it again.

What happens next is people doing stupid things, but that’s hardly unbelievable – teenagers are, in general, stupid, particularly in films like this. Mia has another go and encounters her dead mother, or at least someone who claims to be her. The underage Riley is desperate to join in. Although sensible Jade leaves the room, she leaves the room, and Riley continues pleading to Mia to let him have a go. Mia eventually concedes … with horrific consequences.

Among the stupidity, there’s a scene which is clearly intended to gross us out, involving someone French kissing a bulldog. I get that people, at least some people, find that sort of stuff hilarious. It just added to my feeling that I was intervening in the actions of people who are much younger than myself. Apparently the directors are twins who became famous through youtube videos. I shouldn’t hold this against them, but somehow I do.

I guess all this is me trying to come to terms with two things that I can’t quite concile. The more I think about the plot, the more that I see that the acting is exemplary and the subject matter deals with a number of interesting ideas – grief, self-harm, exclusion. And yet, at the time, it all felt so trivial, a horror-by-numbers which had been constructed by young directors who knew what they’re supposed to do, but lacked the style and class to do it.

Or maybe it was just that I was in a bit of a bad mood, and not prepared to go with it. I’d like to think it was more than that, that several of the scenes just felt too staged, but maybe I’ll watch again and experience something which speaks to my soul. Or maybe it is a trashy film which thinks it’s a lot cleverer than it actually is. It didn’t work for me on the particular evening that I saw it, but that doesn’t mean that it won’t work for you.