Danny Philippou and Michael Philippou, co-directors of *Talk to Me*.

It’d be very easy to make a “talk to the hand” joke when discussing Talk to Me, a movie about an embalmed hand, coated in ceramic, that allows people to not only talk to the Other Side but allows ghosts to inhabit their bodies briefly. It’s a rather jokey premise which probably makes sense when discussing the twin brothers at the helm of the film, Danny and Michael Philippou, names that might be familiar to a subset of YouTube watchers who’ve stumbled upon their channel. With a history of gory horror comedies shorts mixed in with satires and prank videos, you’d expect a debut feature to fit within those parameters. And while the idea of social media influencers meeting a demonic presence fits that mold, Talk to Me is anything but a traditional horror comedy, eschewing the YouTube channel’s ethos for scares and blood-drenched antics.

Talk to Me is one of the scariest movies of the decade.

After a fantastic and off-putting cold open, the narrative quickly centers on Mia (Sophie Wilde), a young woman who lost her mother to suicide a few years prior to the film. Things have been tense at home, so she spends most of her time with her pseudo family, including best friend Jade (Alexandra Jensen) and her little brother Riley (Joe Bird). Mia is a little awkward and is looked at with derision by some of her classmates, including Hayley (Zoe Terakes) who says, “She’s so weird it’s fucking depressing”. Compounding the awkwardness is the fact that Jade has been dating Mia’s former boo, Daniel (Otis Dhanji) and while she seems okay with it, there is obvious chemistry and tension there, still.

A video has gone viral in their town, showing some of their friends gripping a ceramic hand before getting possessed. It’s the creepy kind of video you’d see scrolling through TikTok that is easy to disregard as clever editing and contacts. But when the opportunity arises for Mia, Jade and Riley to go to a party and see the possession in action, they immediately jump on it. Mia immediately agrees to try talking to the hand because of peer pressure and her desire to not be the social outcast everyone seems to think she is. When she grasps the hand and says, “talk to me,” she eventually sees a bloated, dead woman staring back at her. And in the name of a good time, she invites the ghost into her, falling back on the loveseat, her eyes dilating. She basically turns into an Evil Dead-like Deadite briefly, snarling and taunting people, shouting things like “he’ll split ya, pretty boy” and the like. And when they eventually free Mia of her grasp with the hand, she exhales and shouts “that was amazing!” to the cheers of the partiers.

As is the case with movies like this, there are arbitrary rules, such as not letting the spirit stay in your body for more than 90 seconds. And that if you die with a spirit in you, they’ll have you forever. And as also the case with movies like this, they end up breaking the cardinal rules when young kid Riley begs to try it out. What immediately follows is a vicious moment of self-inflicted harm and lots of blood and sets the movie on a course to save Riley from the spirits who seem to have targeted him.

The easiest comparison to make with Talk to Me is that it’s Flatliners for the Social Media Age. Like in Flatliners, these teenagers get a rush and a high from communing with the dead. Mia compares it to being in the passenger seat and that it feels incredible. And like with Flatliners, whenever someone messes with the spirit world, the spirit world punches back. The narrative is actually the clunkiest part of Talk to Me, as it attempts to draw emotional pathos from the backstories involving Mia and her dead mother and the current story of Mia struggling to maintain her new found family of Jade and Riley. Early in the film, Mia ends up hitting a kangaroo and Riley begs her to put it out of its misery. “It’s crying!” he shouts. But Mia isn’t able to end the kangaroo’s life and instead suggests that another car will come to hopefully end its suffering. This rather pedantic opening creates a followthrough in the film’s emotional trajectory, but the implications are too on-the-nose.

Grief and trauma has had quite a moment in horror over the last decade, stretching from The Babadook and up to more recent releases. But writers Danny Philippou, Bill Hinzman and Daley Pearson don’t have the writing savvy to pull the emotional weight off effectively. Too many subplots are introduced as complications, but with the brisk runtime, they aren’t afforded much time to really build on any of the themes. Instead, they are used to create violent or uncomfortable set pieces. It’s ultimately okay, though, because what the Philippou brothers lack in their writing, they make up for in the presentation. Talk to Me is slick, mean and violent and the camerawork by cinematographer Aaron McLisky is stylish and effective.

Talk to Me works because of the aggressive visual style and the assured directorial abilities of the filmmakers involved. While the emotional weight is a little iffy, Talk to Me goes for the throat in pure abject horror. It’s the scariest film out of Sundance this year and easily one of the scariest films I’ve seen in a long time.