“Light the candle to open the door, blow it out to close it.”
This is one of the most important rules in the movie “Talk to Me” where main characters Mia, Jade and Riley, along with other characters close to them, play a new party game involving an embalmed hand and demon summoning which quickly turns deadly.
But before giving a review on the movie itself, a discussion needs to be had on its interesting history.
When looking up the movie, one will see that “Talk to Me” has two release dates. This is actually due to the fact that the movie was shown at two different film festivals before having a nationwide release.
“Talk to Me” first made a debut back in October of 2022 as a preview during the Adelaide Film Festival. This can be seen through the Film Festival’s website.
A couple of months later, the film would make its nationwide debut at the Sundance Film festival in January 2023 and begin to release in other countries through the distribution of A24.
Understandably, releasing a horror movie in the middle of the summer doesn’t sound like the most sound idea. But, according to the Washington Post, the movie that cost $4.5 million to make went on to make roughly around $10 million on its opening weekend and has now made over $88 million in the box offices worldwide — clearly, the filmmakers found a lot of success.
Most recently, the movie headed for Blu-ray this October, which likely encouraged some theaters to do one more screening of the movie before it officially made the switch.
However, before this even occurred, TikTok had a hand in its popularity. On the app, one of the musicians, Richard Carter, posted a video back on Sept. 6 showcasing a song called “Le Monde” that he had made for the movie.
The video went on to gain thousands of views and sparked a TikTok trend featuring the song in the background behind a collage of video clips meant to show off a select color scheme in a work of entertainment to highlight the dichotomy between beauty and destruction. The increased streaming of this song informed more people about the existence of the movie, and allowed it to go out with a bang.
Now does the movie live up to the hype? I would argue it does.
The movie has a very intense start that immediately got me hooked into the plot. I noticed nothing in the movie is only introduced for the scare factor, anything that is mentioned in the movie goes on to have relevance in the plot later on.
The movie was beautifully shot, from the wide shot scenes, close ups and smooth transitions, and nothing ever felt jarring in any way. I don’t wish to speak too much on what happens during the movie as I truly believe this is something one has to go watch for themselves, but there is a montage scene in the movie where everyone tries out the possessed hand game.
Toward the very end of the song, a camera shot is done where one of the characters is tied up in a chair on his side. The camera follows him as he moves back up and then again as he falls to the other side in such a smooth manner that fits perfectly with the song I had mentioned before — “Le Monde.”
Still, the most important things to me are the story and characters which are all done well. The plot makes complete sense for how much sense a horror movie can make, despite the little explanation given as to the existence of the embalmed hand itself. I can be better framed in the context that someone was attempting to get rid of the hand for good and would henceforth not give much history on it to a bunch of teens who saw potential to use it for brief internet fame.
The film is intense and scares the audience really well without it just being cheap jumpscares. However, there is some intense gore in the movie — the characters feel real, they all act in ways that feel right as to how a teenager may act in this situation and who they are as a person.
The main character, Mia, is a broken character and is made abundantly clear. We learn of her mother’s death early on in the movie and from there the movie shows us a character clearly dealing with grief in a fairly unhealthy manner through the addiction she grows with the game and the relationship she forms with the people around her. I will say, some of the other characters, like her best friend Jade, feel a little underdeveloped but it’s something that is easy to look past.
The movie ends pretty unclearly in the sense that the viewer can make an interpretation about what they believe the ending meant to them. But there is no cliffhanger, all ends are tied up.
Overall, I enjoyed this movie. I think “Talk To Me” could very much become a horror movie classic in the future and is an excellent example of the beauties that a passion project can create.
