Talk to Me is an Australian horror flick that acts as a sort of allegory about the perils of teenagers trying stupid viral internet stunts. Because of that, it’s certainly timely. However, it’s much too uneven to really click.
Teens get in on the latest internet craze of filming themselves while performing an occult ritual where they hold a severed hand and say, “Talk to me”, which allows a spirit to possess them. The only rule is you can’t let the ghost in for longer than ninety seconds. Things end tragically when a chick’s younger brother plays the game and winds up permanently possessed. After he is hospitalized, the friends sneak into his room and try to find a way to reverse the curse.
The scene where our heroine volunteers to be a part of the ritual is fairly strong. The game itself is kind of like a supernatural version of the Tide Pod Challenge as the possessed teens contort and twitch while their friends stand around laughing and filming everything with their phones. There’s also a weird scene where the spirit of an old woman sneaks into the bedroom and starts sucking on a guy’s foot.
The first half-hour is engaging and entertaining, but it quickly goes off the rails in the second act. Despite strong individual moments, the lows ultimately outweigh the highs. It doesn’t help that the whole thing plays like a short film that’s been padded out to feature length. The subplot where the dead mother of our heroine tries to warn her from the other side kind of reinforces that idea as it feels like it was only tacked on to beef up the running time. The abrupt ending is also the sort of thing that would work in a short film but when viewed as the finale of a feature, it kind of leaves you pissed off. It’s a shame too, especially when the first half hour or so held so much promise.
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