Danny and Michael Philippou’s Talk to Me manages to proffer a new spin on the trope of demonic possession, which is no small feat considering that it’s been with us since the advent of storytelling itself. In the film, possession is utilized by bored teens as a new party drug, as a dare to assert their brazen bona fides on social media.
Talk to Me’s principal characters sit in a semicircle and take turns holding what appears to be a sculpture of a human hand. While grabbing this graffitied totem, they can talk to demons, who appear via jolting quick cuts, and let the entities occupy them while their friends film the invasion on their cellphones. The seizure of the hosts’ muscles while under the influence is redolent of an overdose, and the kids’ profound disregard for their own safety brings to mind any number of other stupid things that young people do online for attention.
The film’s major achievement is how it manages to ground possession in the reality of modern teenage life. A middle-aged parent can watch this film and find the behavior of its protagonists too plausible for comfort. The disassociation that the characters describe while possessed, which they enjoy, sounds like the disembodiment that one seeks from drug use or, once again, social media. Knowing they’re onto a potent metaphor, the Philippous keep their narrative simple, refusing to clutter Talk to Me with the thickets of subplot and backstory that often weigh down horror films. The film has a free-floating, nearly intangible sense of unease that greatly serves it.
The teenagers of this film don’t resemble the gorgeous twentysomethings that we’re conditioned to expect from your average young-adult horror film, and they’re not sentimentalized and furnished with a handful of quirky traits. They’re annoying and funny and casually mercenary, and just as casually poignant in their need to fit in and define themselves.
For instance, it’s obvious through body language that Mia (Sophie Wilde) has some sort of quasi-sexual “big sister” thing going on with Riley (Joe Bird), the brother of her best friend, Jade (Alexandra Jensen). Given that Mia has lost her mother recently to suicide, and that she feels the need to belong to Riley’s family, there are more than a few neuroses at work here, as well as garden-variety horniness and camaraderie. With their lively yet foreboding tableaux, the Philippous allow you to feel as if you’re noticing these things for yourself.
We know that things aren’t going to turn out well for the characters treating demonic possession as an elaborate game of chicken, but for a while it’s not immediately clear how. Talk to Me should be seen without much advance preparation, so proceed with caution: A character is brutally hurt during a possession, and the aftermath resembles the damage wrought by a disastrous night of drinking and drugging. And this calamity plays into Mia’s feelings of guilt in the wake of her mother’s death, setting off a chain reaction of other disasters.
The Philippous are blunt and pragmatic about how damaged people can perpetuate damage onto others, as their personal baggage warps their empathy and survival skills. Unfairly castigating herself for an atrocity, Mia perpetuates atrocity in turn and runs the risk of divorcing herself from society. The metaphoric dimension of the demons evolves as Talk to Me progresses: They initially connote drugs and social media influences, and later resemble the internal demons that we carry with us, and that can drive us to unexpected breaking points.
This sense of psychological turmoil, as physicalized by something like a demonic plague, recalls Smile and the films that influenced it, such as It Follows and the various versions of The Ring and the original Ringu. Smile is similarly eaten up with the alienation of grief, which is a big theme in American horror cinema right now. But where Smile grows increasingly plotty, Talk to Me consistently operates as a suggestive mood piece concerned with Mia’s struggles to maintain her tether to her world. Wilde gives a thoughtful, haunting performance, while the Philippous conjure a shadowy, gothic atmosphere that is, above all, startlingly melancholic.
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