Kids are going to do silly stuff. But what does being terminally on-line do to IRL relationships when your entire web is within the palm of your hand? In that world, what does actual connection even appear to be?

These had been a number of the many questions posed by Talk to Me, the brand new horror movie from directing duo Danny and Michael Philippou. This film isn’t actually about the web, which kinds an invisible presence within the background, reaching in to affect the characters’ lives. In that approach, it’s not in contrast to the deceased spirits the movie’s protagonists are attempting to contact.

But I’m getting forward of myself.

Talk to Me facilities on Mia (Sophia Wild), a teen who grew to become shut with brother-sister pair Riley and Jade (Joe Bird and Alexandra Jensen) following the dying of her mom. At a home celebration, one of many trio’s mates produces a mysterious ceramic hand, etched with cryptic writing. Light a candle, maintain the hand, say the titular line, and the totem can deliver anybody face-to-face with a random lifeless particular person’s ghost. With one other voice command, the hand may even let the spirit into their physique for a short time.

While the premise seems like so many different films about teenagers dabbling at nighttime arts, every of the seances are shot like they’re in your stoner good friend’s basement in faculty. One by one, the youngsters are possessed whereas the others pull out their telephones and snort at how strung out they get. Then the youngsters put up the movies on-line, regardless of their mates’ protests.

With this framing, a lot of the horror within the movie comes not from anonymous hell spawn, however from the callousness with which friends bully one another—and the concern of dropping what discovered household you continue to have. In reality, for a lot of the movie, letting a lifeless particular person possess the youngsters’ our bodies is sort of portrayed as innocent enjoyable. Don’t keep possessed for too lengthy; don’t take too excessive a dose of the underworld—however so long as you’re secure, it must be fantastic.

Things solely begin to go off the rails when the spirits turn out to be extra acquainted. This ties in to the movie’s themes of connection, grief, and coping mechanisms. But what I discover most fascinating is how the characters are egged on by the stress of social media.

While that’s not the main focus of the film, it’s laborious to keep away from, provided that the administrators received their begin on YouTube. The twins have been creating movies since earlier than they had been youngsters, and in no less than one occasion, one in every of them was arrested for a stunt that concerned driving a car filled with water.

It’s laborious to not really feel that additional weight when the telephones come out. Kids are being peer-pressured to take successful of supernatural powers that none of them can management. And after they get freaked out or terrified by what they expertise, effectively, that’s #content material, child.

Talk to Me doesn’t dwell on the web itself—there’s no montage of likes and feedback and even any indication of whether or not anybody’s watching the movies in any respect. The film issues itself extra with how the stress to carry out can have an effect on the one that’s captured on digicam.