Talk to Me (2022)

6/10

Lapses in logic aren’t necessarily fatal to one’s enjoyment of a film. The more I think about Australian horror flick Talk to Me, the less sense much of it seems to make—particularly the “rules” of possession and the motivations of the spirits who take over people’s bodies via an embalmed hand. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t still enjoy the film, directed by twins Danny and Michael Philippou. It has a great hook, sympathetic lead characters, and a strong final scene. But I also can’t ignore sloppy writing in the script by Bill Hinzman and Danny which undermines the film as a whole.

Mia (Sophie Wilde) is still processing the trauma two years after the death of her mother Rhea (Alexandria Steffensen) from an overdose of sleeping pills. Her best friend Jade (Alexandra Jensen) is now dating Mia’s ex Daniel (Otis Dhanji). With Jade’s younger brother Riley (Joe Bird), they attend a party where the central attraction is the aforementioned embalmed hand. Shake the hand and say, “Talk to me,” and you are able to communicate with a dead person’s spirit. Say “I let you in,” and the spirit will possess you. The hosts maintain a time limit of 90 seconds for possession. Any longer than that, they warn, and the spirits will want to stay.

Spoilers follow.

Naturally, things go awry when characters exceed that time limit. The spirit that first possesses Mia takes a sinister focus on Riley, and stays in her body for a little over 90 seconds. Jade initially forbids Riley from trying the hand, but after she leaves the room, Mia tells him he can do it for 50 seconds. When Rhea’s spirit appears to possess Riley and tries to make amends with her daughter, however, Mia begs to go over the time limit. Riley is possessed for a little over two minutes, which ends with the spirit(s?) forcing him to violently attempt suicide.

Talk to Me is absorbing enough in the moment that viewers might put aside questions that linger afterwards. If it’s Rhea’s spirit possessing Riley, why, after Rhea apologizes to Mia, does the possessed boy try to kill himself? Can different spirits inhabit the same living being during a single “session” with the hand? We see flashes of Riley trapped in the afterlife being tortured by other people, so that appears to be what happens, but the film could have made that clearer.

Mia continues to see spirits without the hand, particularly her mother. Riley remains possessed while in critical condition in the hospital, attempting to kill himself again every time he regains consciousness. When Mia’s father Max (Marcus Johnson) reveals to her that Rhea committed suicide, Rhea’s spirit tells her he’s lying. Mia hallucinates that a possessed Max is trying to strangle her, prompting her to fatally stab the real Max. Then Rhea’s spirit tells Mia that the only way to free Riley from his possession is by killing him.

Part of the reason these scenes are so confusing is because the actions of Rhea’s spirit does not reflect the kind person she appeared to be in life, based on videos we see on her phone of the two goofing around while Rhea was alive. Rhea’s spirit continually acts malevolently. Should we assume an evil spirit is impersonating Rhea? When Rhea tells Mia she needs to kill Riley to free him from possession, she’s lying, since at the end he appears fully recovered—after Mia dies. Did Mia’s sacrifice free Riley? Apparently. But if so, why does he wake up in the hospital instead of by the busy roadway where she had brought him?

At one point, the teens seek out Cole (Ari McCarthy), whose possessed brother killed himself in the opening scene. Cole informs them that a living body will naturally expel spirits over time. How does he know this? Also does this mean the reason Riley has recovered by the end is simply because enough time had passed? If so, that makes Mia’s death meaningless—other than wrapping up a theme from the start of the movie when she comes across a mortally wounded kangaroo on the highway, but can’t bring herself to put the animal out of its misery.

It’s a shame these nagging questions are the thing that stand out most about Talk to Me, because I enjoyed the movie while I was watching it. Unlike Mickey 17, for example, which I was just bored by after a while, Talk to Me doesn’t overstay its welcome at a brisk 95 minutes. The high-concept premise is solid, particularly how the teens use possession as party entertainment and social media fodder.

There are some decent scares, aided by good practical effects. The actors all give fine performances; it was nice to see Miranda Otto as Jade and Riley’s mother Sue. And the final scene, in which Greek partygoers now have the hand and invite Mia’s spirit to possess one of them, is a perfect ending. Still, the script could and should have been better thought out.