A24’s horror hot streak will continue in summer 2023 with Talk to Me, the highly-anticipated Australian supernatural horror feature that can upend a common trope of the genre. The movie’s head-turning debut at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival spurred a bidding war, resulting in A24 acquiring the rights to distribute the film in the United States. Critic reviews have praised Talk To Me‘s well-executed story and use of practical effects, but it’s the setup to Talk to Me that allows it to breathe new life into what is, at this point, a worn-out subgenre of modern horror.
The story centers around the familiar concept of a group of young adults communicating with spirits. On the surface, the movie hits many of the same notes that resonate in the “speaking with the dead” subgenre of horror highlighted recently by the Insidious and The Conjuring franchises. However, one major departure from the typical plot lines of the subgenre is what has critics and audiences buzzing over Talk to Me.
Talk to Me Makes Communicating With the Dead Feel Good
While the core concept of Talk to Me isn’t all that unique (kids talk to the dead using a mysterious object, bad things happen), the fact that it’s framed as feeling good to do is a major departure from its contemporaries. Typically communicating with spirits in the afterlife is a traumatic occurrence, loaded with dark warnings, pain, and fear of doing it again. Talk to Me turns it into a party game, with people taking turns grabbing the embalmed hand that allows for communication. As seen in Talk to Me‘s official A24 trailer, they use a group chat to discuss when and where to play the game, and have rules in place to ensure that nobody goes longer than 90 seconds on the grounds that the spirits might linger if they do.
Sophia Wilde’s protagonist, Mia, describes the experience as “amazing“, which kicks off the plot off as she wants to keep doing it. Mia is further spurred by the fact that she believes she is communicating with her deceased mother, making it an even more positive experience. Instead of a traumatic, scary experience when she communicates with the dead, Mia finds comfort and peace, encouraging her to bring the mysterious embalmed hand home to continue talking to what she believes is her mother.
Good horror movies typically have a metaphor at their heart, with most ghosts, demons, and monsters representing something less concrete, like grief, loss, or trauma. Movies relating to communication with the dead almost always have grief-stricken characters risking the use of a haunted object so that they can speak with a long-gone loved one. That remains true for Talk to Me, but what makes this movie so much smarter is how much deeper it digs into a character actually enjoying the object. The entities tormenting the main character Mia and her friends only do so because she stays in contact too long, and returns to it multiple times. In this case, it isn’t her grief that’s the problem–it’s her addiction to the experience.
There are even substance use metaphors present in Talk to Me to prop up the notion that addiction is the enemy under the surface. The embalmed hand is used at a party and passed around among friends, and people’s reactions to using it are filmed and shared in a group chat. As with any substance abuse, it is oftentimes the people closest to the addicted individual who reap the consequences of that abuse, and the trailer indicates that Mia’s friends will fall victim to whatever she communes with. By replacing the worn-out warnings and fear associated with communicating with the dead with a fresh perspective about how it can be positive and soothing instead of terrifying, Talk to Me can breathe new life into an entire subgenre of horror, and tell a unique and terrifying story in the process.
