Will the year’s most universally praised horror flick live up to expectations? Well, sometimes the hype is justified.
I’ll jump right to it: Talk to Me is not only my favorite horror movie of 2023, but the best film I have covered for the marathon this year so far, regardless of vintage. The story is simple, a group of teens in Australia spend their evenings playing a party game that involves an occult relic which channels the dead. It’s like a Ouija board, only guaranteed to not only allow you to communicate with the deceased, but grant them possession of your body. The teens deploy some basic safety controls (strapping the possessed to a chair with a belt, a carefully watched timer to make sure the spirits don’t linger too long) but inevitably things take a dark turn. The film does so many things right that I was surprised to learn that it was made by first-time filmmakers who got their start on YouTube. I’ll be eagerly anticipating news on their next project.
Perhaps the most impressive aspect of Talk to Me is its balance. The film weaves together tension, scares, and humor with thematic elements of grief and party drug culture. That’s a lot to manage, but it really pulls it off in an elegant way. I adore Jordan Peele’s horror output, but I also have to admit that he can get bogged down in the mechanics of the horror elements of his movies. Talk to Me‘s central premise is easy to understand despite the fact that you get very little lore surrounding the artifact, a ceramic hand covered in graffiti, or how it came to be. There is a touch of exposition to explain the rules, but it doesn’t come off as forced because naturally you have to explain the rules to someone who is playing a game for the first time. The central theme of how people deal with grief is also smartly handled. The past decade has no shortage of brilliant but oppressively bleak horror movies that paint with only one small corner of the emotional palette. This film gives the theme enough play as to not ring hollow, but doesn’t allow the idea of loss to suffocate the rest of the movie. A lot of that has to do with the acting. Sure, some of these “high schoolers” read as college age, but their relationships and interactions feel real and lived in and they are fun to be around, particularly early on before bad things start happening. The house party aspect of the film, which is a big component, succeeds largely on the strength of the performances and it emphasizes the allure of such a reckless activity.
I would be remiss if I didn’t also highlight the physical aspect of the acting as well. This all comes off as complete hokum if the actors don’t fully commit and deliver convincing portrayals of the possessions. There is very little make-up or FX to sell these sequences, which are crucial to the film’s verisimilitude. Sure, we get gore and creature design as the movie progresses, but you really need those unadorned possessions to work if you are going to sell the whole package. If I had to pick one potential negative, I definitely had difficulty connecting to some of the characters choices and motivations at times. That really doesn’t bother me, though, because these are teenagers. If their behavior wasn’t capricious and inscrutable then it would be even less realistic. As I mentioned in a recent post, I don’t often come across unqualified recommendations here at 31 for 31, but Talk to Me has all the right elements to appeal to nearly anyone reading this blog. Go ahead, let them in.
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