Talk to Me (2022)

-

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…!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Suspiria (1977)

-
Image
Day 161 of Sobriety.  What could I possibly say about Dario Argento’s Suspiria that hasn’t been said already? Not much I don’t think. I’ve seen it several times before, but this re-viewing was prompted by wanting to watch it with my wife, because we recently watched (and enjoyed) Edgar Wright’s Last Night in Soho (2021) together, and I was keen to show her where a good deal of that film’s visual style originated. We also watched the 2018 remake of Suspiria a while back, and I think she liked it (I do). While I now consider the 1977 Suspiria to be a classic, I remember being underwhelmed when I first saw it in my late teens or early twenties—thinking it was OK, but being bewildered as to why it was held in such high acclaim. I think my only exposure to Dario Argento prior to that was via his involvement in Lamberto Bava’s Demons (1985), which was much more up my teenage alley. Although I am certain that the impression Suspiria made on me back then was greatly impaired by watchin...
Read more

Mill of the Stone Women (1960)

-
Image
Day 65 of Sobriety. Mill of the Stone Women is an Italian gothic horror film from 1960. It was directed by Giorgio Ferroni, who apparently only directed only one other horror film, but lots of action movies, including many “sword and sandal” movies. I guess the production companies must have been Italian too, but it is set in Holland and the bulk of the cast are either French or German. Despite its multinational qualities, however, it’s considered something of a classic of the Italian gothic cannon, so it has been on my radar for a while. The plot concerns a young journalist who is writing a story about an eccentric sculptor who lives in a windmill. In the course of his work he becomes infatuated with the sculptor’s mysterious daughter. The sculptor only produces grotesque representations of historical female figures in the process of either being executed or committing suicide—for example, we have Joan of Arc about to be immolated, Cleopatra holding the asp to her breas...
Read more

Enys Men (2022)

-
Image
Day 6 of Sobriety. Enys Men depicts the experiences of a woman who has volunteered to conduct an observational study of rare flora on an isolated and seemingly completely uninhabited island off the coast of Cornwall. While doing this, she begins to have strange experiences, including what could be hallucinations or visions (or perhaps just memories?). The film is frequently described as "folk horror"—a sub-genre of which I consider myself to be quite a fan. The more I read about the film (and heard about it on a BBC radio special on folk horror that focused heavily on it), the more my interest was piqued—not least by the polarized viewer reviews and opinions that I read. It seemed to always get either one star or ten. The fact that its critics almost unanimously derided it because "absolutely nothing happens!" only served to stimulate my interest further, as I often tend to like what can be termed "trance movies"—films that require us to adju...
Read more