I love how sometimes there’s a movie I don’t pay attention to the trailers of, I don’t know any of the actors from any other project, I simply see a good RT score and I saw some vague “this is the best horror movie in years!” headlines and I go to the movie theater after work. Talk To Me, A24’s most recent horror acquisition, this time from Australia, was my ‘okay sure I’ll see that’ movie of the week. It’s rare I get to go into a movie without seeing any real advertising for it, and when I’m able to go in blind, I generally have a better experience. Talk to Me is a taut, tense, memorable little buzzkill that ruined my afternoon but in a way I mostly appreciated.

Mia (Sophia Wilde) is a teenager in suburban Australia who is grieving the death of her mother, who probably died by suicide, although this is never confirmed to her one way or another. She spends the majority of her time with her friend Jade (Alexandra Jensen) and her family, who have kind of emotionally taken her in as part of their family, as Mia’s relationship with her father (Marcus Johnson) becomes more estranged.

One night, Mia, Jade, her little brother Riley (Joe Bird) and a group of friends are at a party where they encounter this game that involves a severed embalmed hand. A candle is lit, and the person grabs the hand, says “talk to me”, and then for 90 seconds is able to interact with a spirit on the other side. After 90 seconds, the candle must be blown out in order to “close the door”. So basically, teenagers invite ghosts into the lives of the living and then are surprised when something bad happens.

Sophia Wilde leads a cast of unfamiliar faces, as a group of not-that-smart teenagers try to ward off angry spirits that they invited in in the first place. The characters here aren’t deceptively smart or have deeper intentions. These characters think they know everything, but they’re actually pretty stupid and cruel, you know, the way real teenagers often are. There’s not a whole lot going on here that breaks the horror mold, especially the recent horror trend where it’s just really a movie about grief. This is absolutely one in a series of horror films about the way grief manifests, but I think it’s done pretty effectively.

Talk To Me is a first feature from writer/directors, the twin brother duo Danny and Michael Philippou, who got their start as YouTubers. I had not heard of them, but they appear to have a rather large following. As filmmakers, I think they’re definitely competent, and I look forward to what they do next. Talk to Me runs a short 90-ish minutes and the pace never drags, and there are a lot of twists and turns that keep you guessing. There’s a reliance on practical effects over CGI, and the film doesn’t rely on jump scares, which makes the moments that hit hard have more gravitas than they otherwise might.

The narrative and characterizations did not blow me away, but the performances far and away work for the most part, aside from a very poorly written parent played by Miranda Otto. This is newcomer Sophia Wilde’s movie, and I think she has a very bright future ahead of her. The plot and characters might be a little basic, but the good stuff in Talk to Me is all in the execution. The slowly building sense of tension and dread, the lead performance and the ending is what audiences won’t be able to stop thinking about. Speaking of the ending, I would say the last 15-20 minutes or so feel a bit rushed and maybe could have been given a little more time to breathe, but we end on an intense and very memorable final moment, and that will stick with you long after you leave the theater.