Talk to me is the horror film that goes beyond scares: plot

SWe have been in the midst of the horror Renaissance for some time now. AND Talk to me – out tomorrow in Italy thanks to Midnight Factory – can only confirm the trend that brings titles like The Nun 2 to earn 6 times the proceeds of I am Captain. However, starting from paltry budgets, as between the Seventies and Eighties, and sometimes touching on ethical issues better than products built for reflection: the case of Run away – Get out by Jordan Peele (Oscar for original screenplay in 2017).

So while science fiction is struggling, privileging the philosophical solution to the encounter-clash with the alien, horror gains acclaim by remaining faithful to the entity, the monster, the invisible. However, by throwing ourselves into social control (It Follows), melodrama (Pearl), sectarianism (Midsommar). That is, making it an enhanced horror where the disturbing doubt is interesting, the disorientation of a deceptive geography as in the best examples of the past. It is the reappropriation of darkness in opposition to the meta-ironic drift on gender imposed by Scream and its sequels, reboots and requel (also always successful).

In short, a horror film that is now very serious stuff, even when the device that sets hell in motion is a clear variant of the ouija board, of the mask of Demons, of the Necronomicon of The House. In Talk to me – first work by the Australian twins Danny and Michael Philippou, YouTube wonders – the contraption it is the embalmed and ceramic-covered arm of a seerwith the hand open for a squeeze that brings you directly into contact with the afterlife. Just say “Talk to me”and then give permission to anyone pockmarked in front of you to occupy your body. And say what you have to say.

Talk to methe plot

Who enjoys making evocations for the benefit of smartphonesbecause what is an experience without the disgrace of a completely deformed face uttering ramblings, it’s a group of kids. Bored like all teenagers are in every horror movie. At one of these evenings organized by Hasyley (Zoe Terakestrans actor) also go there My (Sophie Wilde), Jade (Alexandra Jensen) and brother Riley (Joe Bird). A close-knit trio of friends, with Mia who, after her mother’s death by suicide, often finds refuge in Jade’s house, run like a barracks by her mother (a very good Miranda Otto).

The hand game rule provides for a possession time of no more than 90 minutes, beyond there is no return. After many narrow escapes, with highs always stopped in time, it’s just a matter of understanding who will end up among the dead and risk never coming back. That person is poor Riley, a fragile and curious boy who, in the process of psychic alteration, claims to be Mia’s mother. The girl’s heartfelt questions and an intense force that keeps his dead hand glued to hers inevitably push Riley elsewhere. And at the hospital, the possessed body begins to bang its head repeatedly, causing very serious injuries.

Saving him is Mia’s mission, only that she suddenly begins to see her dead mother, to mix up the people and planes of reality. She wants to know the truth about suicide but soon he realizes that those on the other side have a lot of fun putting the living in difficulty. If not actually hurt him. All that remains is to try everything. Like the guys from Nightmare 3that to eliminate Freddy Krueger they have to go to his house.

Mia, new Ripley struggling with the afterlife

All on the shoulders of Sophie Wilde, Talk to me it progressively becomes an action about a girl imprisoned between several nightmares. That of being an orphan, that of her mother who considers her to be a corruptor of her children, that of the love that she still feels for Daniel (her ex and now hers together with Jade). And finally that of his sanity: the pledge of the leap into the void, not even so veiled a great metaphor for the psychedelic drug trip. Of the trap-experiments that are done at that age, with parental authority unable to stem it; She tries everything to make her children sing about their real evening plans.

The predatory spirits that guide her at a certain point, the directors say, are also the personification of her repressed emotions. Of the anxieties that Mia doesn’t face. Charming appearance, but the subject of the film comes from the true stories of stoned kids filmed for fun. And the excellent work of Danny and Michael to transfer everything into the supernatural while keeping the social problem in watermark, they who on YouTube have experimented with genres and tones in the entity RACKARACKA, gives this horror a valuable density of meanings.

But nothing weighs. History – between police, suspicions, fake solutions, rumors and not at all pleasant deaths – fly fast with an impressive narrative agility towards an outcome which, once reached the end, takes on the ambivalence of obviousness and real terror. Deciding which side to take depends on how many horror films you’ve seen. And how much, yes, these weigh in giving value to a work that nevertheless does almost nothing wrong. Not even the representation of a condition that was imagined sooner or later by everyone, and immediately ignored by everyone.

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