Talk to Me (2022)

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Day 86 of Sobriety.

I went to see Talk to Me in the movie theater. The last film I saw in the theater was The Last Voyage of the Demeter (2023), back in mid-September, about a week-and-a-half before I started this blog. I didn’t think much of  Last Voyage of the Demeter at all. On that occasion, I had drunk more than a dozen beers the night before, and I thought that spacing out in the movie theater would be a good way to spend the morning. I guess it was—even if the film wasn’t up to much.

I didn’t actually drink anything in the theater when watching Last Voyage of the Demeter, but in those pre-sober days it was pretty typical of me to take half-a-dozen cans of beer in with me and drink them all while watching the film. (My bladder would usually be bursting by the end of the movie!)

Well, times have changed, and all I had to keep me company while watching Talk To Me was a large bucket of caramel popcorn. And that was just fine, because not only do I love move theater popcorn, the film was pretty cool too!

Talk to Me was apparently directed by an Australian team of young twin brother YouTubers called RackaRacka. To a social media-phobic curmudgeon like me, that sounds like a recipe for disaster, but the film is far from a disaster—it's a lean (95-minute) engaging, very effective horror movie. It's about a group of teenagers who use a mysterious artifact to contact the spirits of the dead, but before long things get way out of hand (excuse the pun). That's pretty much the classic Ouija board story, so nothing particularly new or original there, but there is a lot that is fresh about the execution and some of the nuances of the plot and characters.

There are some excellent creepy moments and some effective, nasty jolts, and—best of all—no over-reliance on jump-scares, no excessive CGI, and no dumb “boss battle” ending. The effective creepy atmosphere is maintained right up until the credits roll. The film is very nicely shot, and the predominantly young cast do an excellent job all round. It's actually pretty refreshing to see young people portrayed believably in a movie, and not some middle-aged production team’s idea of what “the kids” are like.

So, not revolutionary, and not the next VVitch or Hereditary, but a good solid horror flick. Apparently, there are prequels and sequels in the works. I really hope they don’t go and mess it all up…!

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