The premise reads like a party game gone wrong: light a candle, grip a ceramic-coated hand, say "talk to me," and for ninety seconds you get possessed by whatever spirit answers. The Philippou brothers turn this into a metaphor for compulsive risk-taking that never feels like it's lecturing; the kids film each other on phones for social clout, egging one another toward longer sessions, and the film treats that escalation with the dread of an addiction story. Sophie Wilde anchors it as Mia, a girl grieving her mother's death and drawn to the ritual for reasons that have nothing to do with fun, and her performance carries real weight through the increasingly hallucinatory back half.
What sets this apart from the found-footage possession glut is craft: practical effects, tight editing, and a handful of images, a burning, grinning face, a body contorted at a dinner table, that stick well after the credits. The directors, who cut their teeth on stunt-heavy shorts, bring a specific physical intensity to the possession scenes; bodies crack and twist in ways that feel tactile rather than digitally smoothed over. The back third throws logic out in favor of pure nightmare momentum, which will frustrate viewers wanting a tidy explanation for the hand's rules, but the emotional through-line about grief and self-destruction holds it together even when the plot mechanics get shaky.
A séance movie that understands the scariest addiction is the one that starts as a dare.
It's a rare studio-adjacent horror hit that earns its box office by being actually upsetting rather than merely loud; there's a sustained, creeping wrongness to it that outlasts the jump scares. Recommend it to people who liked Hereditary's grief-as-horror engine but want something faster and meaner, or anyone curious what happens when horror filmmakers raised on internet stunt videos get a real budget and crew. It's not subtle, but it's precise about where it wants to hurt you.
Talk to Me was shot in Adelaide, South Australia, on a production budget of roughly $4.5 million, financed with backing from Screen Australia and the South Australian Film Corporation. It marked the feature debut of twin brothers Danny and Michael Philippou, previously known for their gore-heavy YouTube sketch channel RackaRacka, which had built a large following for stunt and effects-driven short films. The screenplay was written by Danny Philippou alongside Bill Hinzman, expanding an earlier short concept. The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2023, where it triggered a bidding war among distributors before A24 acquired worldwide rights.
On release, Talk to Me became A24's highest-grossing horror film, taking in more than $92 million worldwide against its small budget and setting opening-weekend records for the studio in several markets. Critics praised it as one of the strongest horror debuts of 2023, and it later won several genre awards, including recognition from the Saturn Awards and the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films. Its success led the Philippou brothers to develop a follow-up feature, and it's frequently cited as evidence that Australian genre filmmaking was having a notable resurgence in the mid-2020s.
