Talk to Me (2022)
The party trick has started answering back.
Directed by Danny Philippou and Michael Philippou · 95 minutes
Source-based draft ready for editorial review. Critical readings, verdict and advisories are proposed.
Version note: 2022 follows the production/premiere dating requested for this collection; the A24 theatrical release was in 2023.
There are safer party games than inviting a spirit into your body while your friends record the result. Talk to Me makes that decision plausible by treating it as something a group has already learned to find funny.
The ritual offers a turn in the spotlight, a shared experience and the appearance of rules. For a lonely, grieving person, those are considerable attractions. The horror starts before anyone admits that the attraction might be the problem.
Before you watch
Contains graphic self-inflicted injuries, violence involving a young teenager, suicide-related bereavement and disturbing possession imagery. An injured kangaroo is shown, and a possessed person crudely kisses a dog. These are corroborated by the BBFC; the record does not identify real animal harm in the dog scene.
Specific content details (contains spoilers)
- Mia stabs her father while deceived by a supernatural vision.
The setup
Mia (Sophie Wilde), who is grieving her mother, joins friends using an embalmed hand to contact spirits. The experience becomes a repeated thrill until the group exceeds the ritual's limits. The A24 synopsis establishes this much. The circumstances that follow require a more careful spoiler boundary than a comprehensive plot summary would allow.
A room full of witnesses
The strong organising idea is that possession has become social behaviour. A group can see danger and encourage it because the event is entertaining, because someone else has apparently survived it, and because refusing a turn has its own social cost. That gives the supernatural premise a recognisable rhythm without requiring a claim that the ritual is literally a drug allegory.
Mia's grief complicates the pleasure. The possibility of contact means something different to her than it does to a person looking for a frightening clip. Wilde’s Mia moves from the pleasure of being included toward a need the others cannot share. Her vulnerability helps explain her choices without turning grief into a moral failing or making the rest of the group blameless.
The bodily violence has a particular function here. An experience that begins as a performance for spectators becomes harm they cannot safely contain. Its force therefore depends on the relationships and the sudden failure of the group's assumed control, as well as the effects themselves.
The main question for the final act is how the film uses uncertain perception. A character can be deceived by what she sees; an audience still needs enough consistency to understand the decisions she makes. The film makes familiar voices unreliable while keeping Mia’s desire to believe them intelligible. Some action remains ambiguous, but the emotional route into it is clear.
Corny DNA
The severed-hand premise is lurid. The emotional approach gives no reason to assume the film wants to be enjoyed as incompetence. Weirdness and the social mechanics are useful topics; numerical ratings wait for the owner's response.
Verdict
Worth watching — proposed. A strong prospective fit for viewers interested in grief-driven horror and a group ritual that turns pleasure into danger. Severe injury imagery and harm to a minor need clear disclosure. Its final shift of perspective gives the ritual a concise and disturbing consequence.
Spoilers from here
Reveal the plot details and ending
A voice is not proof of a person
The presence claiming to be Mia's mother tells her that Riley must die to escape. That claim conflicts with another account of possession weakening over time. Mia's need for contact makes the apparently familiar voice persuasive, but the film gives no reason to accept its account as an authoritative explanation of the afterlife.
Mia stabs her father during a deceptive vision and takes Riley toward a busy road. The apparent mother speaks in terms of keeping him, exposing a purpose beyond rescuing him. Mia ends up in traffic; the precise division between her choice, Jade's intervention and the impact is not made into a simple heroic statement. The plot account corroborates the sequence and its change of perspective.
The party continues somewhere else
Mia sees Riley recovering and finds that the living no longer acknowledge her. Another group then summons her through a hand ritual. The experience once sold to her as access has made her available to someone else's entertainment.
The ending completes the social structure with unusual economy. The story does not need a final lecture about addiction or grief: the participant has become the thing being passed around. That closure is stronger than a complete supernatural explanation would have been, although the ambiguity of the road incident resists an uncomplicated account of sacrifice.