Whether it’s a result of the actor and writers’ strikes or just a testament to the strength of the word of mouth campaign for this movie, but when I showed up for my 8:40PM showing the theater (albeit a small one) was completely packed with people from top to bottom, including Friend who had just come off of a break up after two years with a bum and Friend who watched this entire movie without once flinching because he has found a way to turn off the connection between the fear center of the brain and the rest. (More on this later.)
I’d read some headlines about this movie before going in: that it was the scariest movie of the decade or that it was a movie made by the internet, sort of the Bodies Bodies Bodies of seance movies. As someone who watched most of it from behind ten fingers, it is that brilliant mix of tension and comedy, the sort of movie that effortlessly flexes the tug and pull of gasps and laughter. In some ways, the artistic direction of the movie which always tends toward creepypasta and asceticism over maximalism, violence, jump scares, gore, or head-smashing, makes it feel like a movie with a lot more mass appeal than your run of the mill spooky film.
Instead of having the spirits at the seance constantly on screen, they’re more like the Shark from Jaws? They’re there for a moment and then they disappear and we are left watching the reaction of the teenager who can see them. We’re left in an odd place where we get to watch a bunch of people filming it on their phones, which allows for some exceptional lo-fi SFX. Talk to Me’s charm comes from the way in which the possession activity is so social and the way in which its metaphorical vehicle is so mobile. At first, Mia’s enthusiasm for the activity seems less like a means of communing with her mother and more of a freeuse kink that reminds me so much of Music Box Key in Locke & Key: the puppetry, which requires a certain kind of suspension of disbelief from the audience but also some next level commitment from the actor who’s simulating a possession. So much of the action of this movie is about watching teenagers get marionetted by spirits on their seats, usually but not limited to being tied up, which has its own kinkiness for your consideration. The sheen of Mia’s initial experience with the seance wears off quickly when it becomes clear that they are not completely in control of the process. That they’re dealing with powers beyond their understanding. At which point, the vehicle kind of evolves. SPOILER: I’m still, a week out from seeing this movie not quite sure whether Mia’s sacrifice at the end and the privileged scene we get in her purgatory at the hospital is a statement in favor of suicide or against. Like, is she to be praised for throwing herself on the tracks to save her friend in this trolley problem or is she supposed to have killed the wounded kangaroo? It’s clear that the spirits possessing that kid are a bag of dicks not to be trusted (see what happens to her dad), but at the same time, creating an evil spirit form of her father disrupts some of the rules we’re aware of in the film up until that point and some deceptive cuts to him rooting through her bag make it seem like he’s maybe accidentally used it, even though that seems impossible on second thought since he’d have to not only see a spirit, but also let it inside him. So, yeah, not entirely sure what to make of the ending.
There’s another comic I’m especially fond of that I think helps improve my enjoyment of this movie: Gail Simone’s short-lived but excellently crafted Clean Room, which follows a similar premise, demons(???) are attempting to gain purchase in this world. Even little things like the deeply sexual way in which they inhabit living bodies is similar. The sexuality of Talk to Me tows the line between being just the right amount of titillating and just the right amount of silly. The close touches, the blissed out grins after a particularly intense seance, and then the rest of the jokes involving horniness that lead to some very satisfying audience laughs.
The interactions between Mia and Jade are wonderful and at the core of this movie is their fraught and twisty friendship. There’s a twist in the third act in the way that the hand works is wonderful.
I award this movie six to ten babadooks.
