If you saw any marketing materials for Talk To Me and assumed that it’s a generic jump scare-laden teen horror, that’s totally understandable. It has a young cast, a suburban setting and a supernatural MacGuffin. There have been dozens of releases in the last 15 years that fit that criteria, few of them are enjoyable at best.  

So what makes Talk To Me different? Well, despite its aesthetic, it’s a horror film less in the vein of a Conjuring or Insidious and more in that of a Hereditary or a Get Out. Talk To Me has something to say basically.

A group of Australian youths toy with an embalmed hand that enables them to communicate with the spirit world. Everything’s all fun and games until one of the teens, Mia (Sophie Wilde), inadvertently frees an evil force.

The Characters

Horror films that feature teenagers tend to play like ensemble pieces. One of the cast, typically the ‘final girl’ of the group, will get a little more development than the others but generally all the characters are written with equal levels of dimension. This is not the case with Talk To Me.

Talk To Me has a full-blown protagonist, which makes it very refreshing as a new horror film. The whole plot is driven by the past, fears, desires and actions of Mia. We learn that she lost her mother to an apparent suicide not long ago. She lives with her father who she barely talks to. The only people she has a genuine connection with are her friend Jade (Alexandra Jensen) and her family, which consist of her mother Sue (Miranda Otto) and younger brother Riley (Joe Bird). They seem to be the only people who find Mia more interesting than their phones.

A grieving, socially isolated protagonist is nothing new in modern horror but what makes Mia interesting to watch is the behaviours she’s developed due to her mourning. Her bond with Jade’s family is obvious and makes for wholesome viewing as you witness their chemistry. When Mia is introduced to the embalmed hand however, her mournful behaviour leads to devastating consequences.

The rest of the film follows her efforts to undo the damage she’s done, all the while resisting her undying need for connection.

Mia’s story clearly concerns the epidemics of loneliness that occur in the age of social media. I say ‘clearly’ despite having only seen the film once. What Talk To Me says about those subjects I’m still unsure, it definitely makes me want to watch it again and I don’t think I’ve felt that way about a new horror film since 2021’s Candyman.

The Horror

The horror in Talk To Me is similar to that of the generic horror film the marketing makes it out to be. There are a few jump scares but they never get excessive and they are quite affective as you’re genuinely invested in the characters and themes.

My one criticism of the horror and the film as a whole is its world-building. I believe it was Jay Bauman of RedLetterMedia who once described the importance of rules in horror, giving the terror a purpose and setting it boundaries.

The abilities of the embalmed hand are made very clear however the nature of the spirits it unleashes is very vague and not in a good way. It’s vague in that it doesn’t resemble any afterlife described in any religions, it’s not the Christian Heaven or Hell for example. It’s something else, something alien, which is much scarier than an afterlife already established by a doctrine. However, this uncertainty is never acknowledged by the characters. They know that the spirit world is awful and dangerous but they don’t recognise how little they understand it.

If the characters looked it up online and discovered it’s a hell dimension described in a certain holy book (extremely cliché I know), their attitude would be understandable but since they’re going by experience alone, their lack of trepidation is baffling. It is for me anyway. This is unfortunate because it’s a small issue with noticeable consequences. A few lines of dialogue could’ve easily rectified this. All the film needs to do is show that Mia and her friends are nervous about exploring what is essentially the unknown.

Putting that issue aside, Talk To Me is one of those films that prove the old adage that there are no dull subjects, only dull writers. It has all the elements of an average horror but arranges them in a way that results in something of quality. I recommend it to fans and non-fans of horror. It’s a good film regardless of its genre.

I give Talk To Me an incredible 9 out of 10.