In this movie summer of screaming pink (”Barbie”) and flaming orange (”Oppenheimer”), is there psychic and aesthetic room for a dour, low-lit Australian horror film about demonic possession?
“Talk to Me,” a crafty debut feature from the brothers Danny and Michael Philippou, makes an unnerving case for the answer to that question in the affirmative.
The premise has elevator-pitch simplicity in its favor. A mysterious embalmed hand, attached to roughly half a forearm, is making the rounds in suburban Adelaide, South Australia, among various groups of teenagers. Grab the hand, say the words “talk to me” and suddenly you’re in touch, violently, with a particular evil spirit. You have 90 seconds to unclasp, or the spirit makes the jump to the real world. The risky game, typically filmed and posted online by a gaggle of iPhone or Android cellphone users within seconds, leaves the latest “player” nerve-wracked, altered — and a little high. And wanting more.
Every teenager’s home life in “Talk to Me” is plenty rough even without the supernatural rough stuff. The film boasts an exceptional lead performance by Sophie Wilde, who plays Mia. Her late mother died under cryptic circumstances, and she has been struggling to connect with her widower father ever since. One night Mia and best friend Jade (Alexandra Jensen) decide to hang with some mean, bullying-prone fellow teens, for a menacing house party attended also by Jade’s vulnerable 14-year-old brother, Riley (Joe Bird).
Mia gives the hand a try, and the way the Philippou brothers visualize the emergence of Mia’s late mother, and how she enters the body, voice and grieving soul of her daughter, signals both the technical and emotional skills of Wilde. We’ve seen possessions like this in the movies before. But from its elaborate single-take opening shot, which culminates in a murder and a suicide, to its grimmest manifestations of demonic self-injury and injury to others, “Talk to Me” dramatizes its variation effectively.
The young, adrift characters’ anguish feels real, for better and worse: There are times when the filmmakers seem to be walloping their main players, and the audience, just because. Yet actors as incisive and persuasive as Wilde, Jensen and Bird break your heart a little, while the trials they endure are making that same heart race. Even if “Talk to Me” feels at times as if some crucial, characters-just-hanging-out material failed to make the final cut, the movie gets under your skin.
The Philippou brothers come out of YouTube, and are best known for their YouTube channel RackaRacka, where clever genre mashups made on the cheap run wild, and free. (One example: “Harry Potter VS Star Wars.”) The filmmakers’ influences come from everything, everywhere. It may take a while — this is a mission they’ll either choose to accept, or ignore, as they continue their work — for the Philippous to find their fullest moviemaking instincts. In “Talk to Me,” they’re communing with spirits as far-flung as kinetically playful Edgar Wright (”Shaun of the Dead”) and twisted-grim Ari Aster (”Heriditary”). Their debut film’s distributor, A24, always has an eye out for new purveyors of modern horror.
One look at the trailer, and you’ll know if it’s for you.
“Talk to Me” — 3 stars (out of 4)
MPA rating: R (for strong/bloody violent content, some sexual material and language throughout.)
Running time: 1:34
How to watch: Premieres in theaters July 28
Michael Phillips is a Tribune critic.
Twitter @phillipstribune