Talk to Me

A great ghost-horror movie in a new interpretation, with the fine idea of connecting with the “other side” and realistic teenage characters whose relationship drama is equally as strong and important as the mystery dimension. Unfamiliar faces, an increasingly gloomy mood and a bad-ass conclusion to the story. An Australian debut feature with the qualitative parameters of producer Jason Blum’s best pieces. (01/14/2024)

I remember Danny and Michael Philippou from their early days on YouTube; their wild content had its charm. So, I’m even more surprised that they stepped into the director's chair and made a full-fledged feature film that a more established filmmaker wouldn’t need to be ashamed of. I really liked the concept itself. The seances offered an incredibly intense experience (shame there weren’t more of them). The acting was okay, but no one really blew me away. The ending was intriguingly handled; I didn’t expect the parallel with drug use. Thumbs up for that. A well-crafted film all around. We’ll see what the sibling duo comes up with next. I give it a 7/10. (02/13/2024)

Talk to the hand, or combine an idiotic viral TikTok challenge, a metaphor for drugs, a drama about mourning and a horror movie about possession and you have the genre flick of year, in which cleverly malicious directing, excellent actors and a heavy atmosphere in which the world of phantoms that may or may not mean well by people increasingly crosses over into reality. A more than respectable successor to films such as Get Out and It Follows. I’m trembling! (12/05/2023)

Talk to Me is an enjoyable little ghost story from the antipodes that doesn't try to get an audience response with cheap scares, but instead spends a good amount of time on the relationships between the main characters. The concept of ghost séances as risky fun for careless zoomers is an interesting premise that could sound utterly ridiculous in the wrong hands, but here it works very solidly, thanks mainly to the believable and not annoying characters of Australian teenagers. (01/26/2023)

Based on their internet videos, one might get the impression that the brothers Danny and Michael Philippou are just a couple of louts riding the wave of post-Jackass dumbfuckery and YouTuber bullshit. Their feature-length debut is thus all the more surprising, as it is a very intense genre flick with precision craftsmanship, as well as an absorbingly sensitive work that is able to thought-provokingly address a full range of the young generation’s frustration and general depressing issues without in any way coming across as being too clever for its own good or in-your-face. Talk to Me radiates fierce energy, formalistic boisterousness and devastating horror intensity that brings to mind the first Evil Dead, though Sam Raimi put his supreme talent to use solely in the interest of genre entertainment with very little reach beyond the confines of the screen. By comparison, the Philippou brothers expressively thematise motifs such as the depressing tension that comes with the pressure to fit into the group and the endless provocations and ever-present danger of making a fool of oneself under the watchful eye of social media. The backbone of the brilliantly constructed narrative consists in the coming to terms with the loss of a loved one and the associated risk of falling into the abyss of depression and blaming oneself. The film manages to present this subject with sobering empathy and a powerfully intense sense of dread. (09/30/2023)