A few weeks back, I had the express pleasure of seeing a movie before its wide release, that movie ended up being Danny and Michael Philippou’s directorial debut, Talk to Me. Gaining notoriety from a YouTube channel famous for creating short films, these two Australian creators teamed with independent production studio A24 to bring to life their first of many movies to come, already announced of which is a cinematic reboot of the iconic video game series, Street Fighter under the watchful eyes of Legendary Pictures and Warner Bros.
Talk to Me takes from a myriad of sources but none of it feels tired, if anything it breathes an insane amount of life into ideas made famous and reinvents them all over again. It wears these inspirations on its sleeves loud and proud, I personally saw elements from films such as Evil Dead, Ouija, The Sixth Sense, and even a universally panned title such as The Bye Bye Man and takes ideas present there and mashes and warps them into new and fascinating forms that compliment one another excellently.
As a movie, Talk to Me features next to no well-known actors to those of us in the States, but for this being a first introduction, nobody phones it in, in fact I’ll say everyone gives a grade performance, some even s tier. Wilde, Jensen, and Bird especially show vulnerability and intensity that even some seasoned actors struggle with from time to time.
I’d also like to say, the seamless integration of CGI paired with otherworldly practical effects and monster designs that for two film fans such as the iconic RackaRacka duo, must have been a blast to create and end up as a sight to behold.
With all the other praises being sung about this film, the most apparent needs to be mentioned, that being, of course, the story. Which is most often what’s immediately criticized in most other horror movies. There’s a clear thematic window you see the movie taking pretty early on, that it wants you to see, but much like a good magician, it draws your eye to one thing so you don’t focus on another and then when the reveal happens your jaw is left dropped and in your mind amazed at what you saw.
Talk to Me is where the genre of horror needs to be headed towards, frankly, no, not just horror, but cinema as a whole, we need more innovators like this creative team willing to shake things up and see what happens, this is genuinely one of the best horror movies I’ve ever seen, a 10/10 in almost every conceivable way.
5 out of 5 stars.
Talk to Me comes to theatres on July 28, 2023.
