Talk to Me (2023)

Talk to Me feels like the kind of horror that grabs you by the wrist and doesn’t let go—slick, ferociously paced, and strangely tender beneath the terror. The Philippou brothers shoot with a restless, party-night energy that makes the supernatural feel immediate and dangerously contagious, while the practical effects land with a wince-inducing tangibility instead of CGI haze. At the center, Sophie Wilde gives a raw, lived-in performance that turns the scares into something sharper: a story about grief, loneliness, and the seductive lie that you can “just talk” to what you’ve lost without paying for it. It’s nasty, intense, and not remotely a comfort watch (the violence and distress are real), but if you want modern horror with craft, nerve, and an emotional pulse, this one delivers.

Talk to Me is clearly aiming to be a slick, youth-driven possession thriller with real emotional weight, using grief and peer pressure as the fuel behind its “one more time” party-game hook. When it’s firing, it’s nasty, tense, and impressively confident for a debut, with Sophie Wilde doing a lot of heavy lifting to keep the story grounded. The catch is that beneath the punchy concept, the plot can feel a bit conveniently steered, with rules that bend when the movie needs a bigger scare, and the “elevated horror” packaging doesn’t always add up to deeper insight. If you want airtight mythology or something genuinely new, you may leave underwhelmed—but if you’re up for a mean-spirited, high-energy ride with strong performances and some properly unsettling imagery, it delivers enough to justify the hype (just not all of it).