frankyt
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Post by frankyt on Sept 18, 2023 14:51:31 GMT -5
Just got around to finally seeing this one and I really enjoyed it. Movie revolves around touching a mysterious hand saying talk to me and I let you in to let a recently or not so recently deceased person from purgatory or some such (the lore is kinda vague which is awesome) communicate with you.
The group has established that 90 seconds is the max time you can be connected without risk of never being let go - so of course the first round that our protagonist Mia gets involved in it goes a little over... but that's no big deal is it?
Mia has lived with only her dad for 2 years after her mother died of an accidental overdose of sleeping pills (more on that later) and as you can imagine her home life is fraught and awkward. So she runs over to her best friend's house to kinda play family with a normalized family unit.
As you can probably assume the mothers spirit gets touched and let in a few times (or is it?) And this causes mia to want to further go down the rabbit hole of the hand.
It all ramps up really nicely towards the end and the last ten minutes or so is very intense and the directors use a few little tricks that make the final scene very effective and powerful.
Claims that the prequel was already shot (ala Maxxine, pearl, etc) has me excited but also slightly worried - the further you explain lore in a horror universe the more ridiculous it becomes and frankly less scary.
Cautiously optimistic but id say this is handily the best horror movie of the year so far (not a whole lot of completion - Megan, Boogeyman, evil dead apartment - maybe October will bring some more scares) and I'll def be looking forward to the prequel/sequel.
8/10
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PhantomKnight
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Post by PhantomKnight on Oct 1, 2023 11:06:25 GMT -5
The term "elevated horror" can go one of two ways for people: one, inspire interest among some who are generally tired of the typical forms of horror movies, or two, generate eyerolls from those who still appreciate a good old-fashioned scarefest. The studio A24's horror catalogue seems to be made up pretty exclusively of ones that lean aggressively into elevated horror, but Talk to Me is one that comfortably occupies the middleground between both, and is all the better for it. Debut filmmakers Michael and Danny Philippou, who come from a YouTube background, really do show a strong sense of style here that permeates throughout the whole film and creates a strongly atmospheric sense of dread. As with most horror movies these days, the central theme here is grief, and the Philippous (who also co-wrote the script) explore that really well through their central character Mia (Sophie Wilde) while also building an effectively creepy horror narrative around that. But in addition to grief, one could also easily look at this movie as a metaphor for drug addiction/abuse, what with the plot concerning teenagers becoming addicted to using an embalmed hand to communicate with the spirit world. And it's that level of subtext and themes that help elevate Talk to Me from being just another routine horror movie about teenagers messing with forces that they shouldn't be messing with. The Philippous' sense of style and storytelling approach combined with how well they pull off the horror aspects of the film really do create a "best of both worlds" scenario here: this is an elevated horror that goes pretty deep in exploring its ideas and themes while also providing a satisfactory experience in terms of its genre trappings. The film mines its fair share of gruesome thrills out of a lot of its scenes, thrills that are delivered with clear skill, and the Philippous also manage to stick the landing. Talk to Me has been firmly in my head ever since seeing it, and I for one am looking forward to restarting the conversation.
***1/2 /****
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Dracula
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Post by Dracula on Oct 1, 2023 18:53:35 GMT -5
Talk to Me(7/26/2023)
The “A24 horror movie,” itself something of a subset of “elevated horror” (or whatever you want to call it if that offends you) was something that I thought was going to be the future of the genre and would dominate for years. Now? Eh, I still basically like it but it’s become apparent that even trends I really like are still susceptible to overuse and can lose their edge. Take the latest horror film distributed A24, Talk to Me, which is probably the best pure unambiguous horror flick they’ve put out since Midsommar give or take a Pearl but it still doesn’t really feel like it has the bite or impact it might have had were it to have come out in the late 2010s. The film looks at a group of teenagers who have (for reasons that go largely unexplained) obtained a stone arm that possesses some sort of mystical powers that allows people who touch it and engage in a ritual to see ghosts and allow those spirits to possess them. These being idiot teenager they opt to use this extremely powerful totem for the purposes of creating what is essentially a TikTok challenge as they take in these spirits for thrills as a party game. It’s not hard to see this as a metaphor for either drug abuse or other forms of dangerous behavior that teenagers peer pressure each other into. The film’s directors, a pair of siblings named Danny and Michael Philippou who were in their late twenties when they made this, apparently got their start as Youtube influencers so I think they do know a thing or two about this culture and don’t come off like judgmental boomers when they criticize this behavior but also don’t condone it by any means either. Obviously this metaphor isn’t the most subtle and I also wouldn’t call the movie particularly horrifying when the scares come in (it’s one of the few horror flicks that might have benefited from having a few more jump scares added to keep the audience a bit more on edge). I’d also suggest that the filmmaking maybe lacks a certain creative spark; they feel more like they’re consciously copying the A24 horror aesthetic than they are organically coming to it, but as imitations go it’s not a bad one. Still I’m pretty positive on the whole thing, it might be a touch derivative of other horror “arty” horror movies but we do still live in a world where lame Conjuring ripoffs are still kind of the mainstream so in that context this still rises above the competition pretty clearly.
***1/2 out of Five
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