Tropic Sprockets / Talk to Me

By Ian Brockway 

The Philippou Brothers strike eerie territory with an effective horror debut in “Talk to Me.” The film is a kind of “Candyman” tale in that one must incant a summoning or a wish to interact with the supernatural realm. 

The film is genuinely creepy with jarring moments and is greatly boosted by a solid performance by Sophie Wilde. The film will definitely keep you on edge though the last seconds feel a bit too conventional.

Mia (Wilde) grieving the death of her mom, goes to a party with her friend Jade (Alexandra Jensen) and 14-year-old Riley (Joe Bird). The boys are macho and hyper while the girls giggle and roll their eyes. One partygoer is driven to try a parlor game involving a ghoulish plaster hand that is all the rage on the internet. The group asks Mia first. She reluctantly agrees and is strapped in the seat. Those around the table press their phones to take a video. Mia touches the hand but is skittish. 

The boys egg her on. Mia fully grabs the hand, frightfully the hand reciprocates. She is overcome with a tremendous euphoria similar to an orgasm. She drops down and smiles in a very startling way and speaks in a weird rasp. She chokes. They unclench her from the hand’s grip. As things go, if one stays at the “game” for more than 90 seconds the handshaker becomes completely possessed.

Mia’s encounter is frightful enough, but the next day they all want to try again turning it into a kind of possession party as if waiting for the head-spinning to gyrate like a hundred tops and the green gazpacho to flow. 

The next day young Riley somehow convinces the late teen crowd to let him try for about fifty seconds give or take. What follows is quite jarring and outrageously bloody and it will induce flinches. I confess to looking away. There is one scene involving some unfortunate affection with a bulldog that will have you shaking your head.

Suffice to say that Riley is in a bad way, and he is rushed to the hospital in Adelaide Australia.

Mia is racked with guilt. She sees her dead mom and has visions of Riley in Hell. Mia also has confrontations with her father, but they don’t go well.

She becomes consumed by the hand with the desperate hope of making things right. The visions of her mother increase.  It becomes quite clear that Mia is possessed by a demon along with Riley, who is either catatonic or driven by suicide.

The character of Mia is effective in its display of grief and there are plenty of striking very scary moments. The most effective segments of the film are contained in the first forty minutes. Mia maintains her emotional core and her symptoms are similar to Amelia Vanek, the beset mother in “The Babadook” which had the Philippou Brothers as crew members. While the frights are in multiples, the believability of Mia’s enthusiasm for the hand thing is odd, given that the possession episodes are so frightening.The Philippou Brothers have a percussive skill in showing sudden jarring violence without warning, evidenced in their extremely gory and disquieting YouTube videos.

The compelling dark comedy aspect of the film lies within the two-day party with all of the youngsters looking forward to a full-fledged possession a la exorcist, their smart phones poised like six-guns.

In seeing an odd hand at a table with more graffiti on it than a Basquiat painting at The MoMa, don’t give it a handshake and make sure to hold your tongue.

Write Ian at [email protected].

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