Talk to Me

After hearing lots of praise for Talk to Me I was really excited to have a chance to see it at the Broadway last night.  The hype is definitely real because it is incredibly unsettling.  Mia (Sophie Wilde) is a teenager who is still traumatized by the suicide of her mother Rhea two years prior.  She reluctantly attends a party with several of her friends, including Jade (Alexandra Jensen), Riley (Joe Bird), Daniel (Otis Dhanji), Hayley (Zoe Terakes), and Joss (Chris Alosio), and one of them proposes a game that has been making the rounds on social media which uses a mysterious statue, purported to be the embalmed hand of a medium, in order to summon the spirits of the dead.  The subject lights a candle, holds the embalmed hand, and says "Talk to me" to meet a spirit then "I let you in" to be possessed by it but the candle must be blown out within 90 seconds or the connection will not be severed.  Mia volunteers to be the first subject and, even though she is possessed by a malevolent spirit who resists leaving, she is energized by the experience and all of the teens eventually have a turn and feel the same adrenaline rush that keeps them coming back for more.  However, when Riley takes a turn, Mia is convinced that he is being possessed by the spirit of her mother and events quickly spiral out of control.  There are some truly terrifying scenes (with mostly practical effects) but what kept me so unnerved is the way the filmmakers create escalating tension with ominous sound design and disturbing imagery.  In this regard it really reminded me of Hereditary because I felt the same sense of unrelenting dread (although, thankfully, I did not scream out loud).  The young and relatively unknown (to U.S. audiences) cast is outstanding, especially in the possession scenes, but I was particularly impressed with Wilde because her fully committed physical performance is electrifying.  Finally, I really enjoyed the exploration of how grief and trauma can take possession of someone interspersed between the scenes of gore.  I highly recommend this to fans of the horror genre.