We have to accept at this point that at least for a whole generation (if not more), horror movies are going to be made in the shadow of Hereditary. Ari Aster’s chronicle of a family’s grief as séance-goosing spooker, which was both an unlikely word-of-mouth hit theatrically and a critical darling, set a template that can be felt profoundly in much of the horror cinema of the last half decade. First act narrative surprises, grisly violence involving children, a bluish-gray color palette, and, most importantly, horror as a way of contending with a familial lineage of trauma are now all mainstays of the genre, especially in combination. Twin brother filmmaking pair Danny and Michael Philippou check all of these boxes in Talk to Me, their debut feature. They scramble enough of the details to not make it a carbon copy of Aster’s own maiden voyage, but the DNA is clearly there. And predictably, Talk to Me isn’t nearly as successful as Hereditary, though it does offer some hair-raising moments and arresting images of its own.
Mia (Sophie Wilde) is a teenager navigating her latter high school years in Adelaide, Australia recovering but clearly still reeling from the sudden death of her mother two years before the movie picks up. She is an honorary member of her friend Jade’s (Alexandra Jensen) family because of Jade’s mother’s (Miranda Otto) sympathy for her plight and due to her closeness with Jade and Jade’s younger, impressionable brother Riley (Joe Bird). She also half-jokingly pines after Jade’s devoutly Christian boyfriend, Daniel (Otis Dhanji), with whom she once held hands. One night, Mia, Jade and Daniel are invited to a kickback at Hayley’s (Zoe Terakes) house, where a creepy ritual is introduced that the kids treat as just another party trick: everyone crowds around as a brave volunteer grips a sallow, seemingly plastered human hand and invites a spirit to possess them. When Mia saddles up to try it, the act fills some kind of void for her, a high that she basically helplessly pursues throughout the film’s remainder.
Those who host a specter lean back in their chair, their pupils dilated and bulging in a manner that looks not unlike a Snapchat filter but is also pretty chilling. This reaction, as if under an intoxicating spell, is a rather obvious analogue for teenage alcohol and drug use, a potentially calamitous activity which adolescents also often treat carelessly. One of Talk to Me’s most vivid depictions is the thrill-seeking that can occur in someone’s basement when you’re just shy of adulthood and the aura of danger and risky rebellion that can emanate in such spaces. The Philippous even hint at the idea that it’s almost this vibe kids huff for adrenaline more than the actual substances. Like Hereditary, where one of the inciting factors of the characters’ woes was the attendance of a high school house party, the film somewhat conservatively acts as a cautionary tale of what happens when kids selfishly push their debauchery too far. But in a rare instance of the Philippous’ film improving on Aster’s, the Aussie film better captures the allure of such behavior. Essentially, the Philippous come off like they’ve actually done their time in these illicit garages and rec rooms, whereas Aster comes off like an outsider who always wanted to be invited but wasn’t.
Made for a little less than half of Hereditary’s already economical $10 million budget, Talk to Me’s limitations eventually become more pronounced after a promising start. Its world is increasingly small and blinkered, which I suppose could be attributed to its adopting the cloistered perspective of a suburban teenager but it’s beyond that — as the film wears on, we never feel like we get a good sense of this town and its community and how our lead characters fit into it, which could be a symptom of minimal shooting locations, or just low-effort environment sketching. Where it begins feeling like the story is springing organically from its characters’ fickle desires, the narrative also grows a bit shapeless and murky, like the Philippous are casting about for the next idea or development; even though it wasn’t, the movie plays like a short film that was speciously expanded into a feature.
Despite these constraints, it’s a credit to Wilde’s performance that Mia is one of the more heart-wrenching and, frankly, despicable antiheroes in recent memory. Her trajectory is totally understandable and yet her continual refusal to make the right decision ought to elicit the kind of mass frustration that a rowdy midnight audience can groove on for 90 minutes. Also stoking audience engagement is the excellent sound design (Lachlan Harris is credited for sound effects editing). The rhythmic squeaks on the soundtrack are akin to a rusty swing set — not a totally novel idea but a well-executed one — and any time a character is dealing with the undead, muffled commotion that sounds like movement underwater is cued up, which is less cheesy in practice than you might think.
Talk to Me holds one’s attention while you’re in it but looks immediately more threadbare and lacking in the rearview, a bit of A24 trauma horror with some white-knuckle scares but also a lot of stylistic flourishes and thematic interests that appear more like trendy put-ons than explorations wrought with actual grief or terror.
Photo courtesy of A24
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