I Just Saw

Directed by YouTube stars the Philippou brothers, Talk to Me is a surprisingly clever twist on The Monkey’s Paw, the 1902 ghost story by WW Jacobs in which the titular mummified paw grants wishes with terrible consequences. This time the paw is an embalmed human hand covered in names like a plaster cast, and the subject of a social media challenge: allow yourself to be tied to a chair, grip the hand, say “talk to me”, and become possessed by a ghost. You then have 90 seconds to essentially trip out before you must either release the hand or risk unleashing the spirit. And you thought ingesting raw cinnamon was bad.

Sophie Wilde plays Mia, an Australian teenager whose mother has died in what may or may not have been a suicide attempt. She and her friend Jade (Alexandra Jensen) with the latter’s little brother Riley (Joe Bird) rock up at a party where the hand is in use. (So to speak…) Mia volunteers to do the challenge, and that’s her first mistake.

You know what? For a supernatural teeny-bop slasher, let alone a YouTuber movie, this isn’t bad at all. Compared to a similar entry in the genre, Blumhouse’s Truth or Dare (2018), also about a group of youths who summon malign forces via a social media game, it creates an authentic setting in its Aussie suburb, “Chekhov’s Gun” theming, real tension, and somewhat believable characters. (I’ll get back to that last one.)

A part of that might be down to the fact that Truth or Dare was made by forty-somethings, whereas the Philippou brothers are much more au fait with the world of young people and social media. That doesn’t make their characters likeable, but it does make them a little more real-seeming. (Possibly related side-note: I’ve never liked kids, even when I was one.)

As for comparing it to other YouTuber movies… To say that this is better than, say, the Paul brothers’ Airplane Mode (2019) – wherein a man breastfeeds an infant – or (ugh) Shane Dawson’s Not Cool (2014) – which thought that a schizoid woman’s mental torture was hilarious (don’t ask) – is like saying that your mother looks better than a week-old bin bag stuffed to bursting with used nappies and left outside for a week in July. We’re not dealing with a noble genre. Talk to Me shows that YouTubers can make good films, however.

The plotting is as ropey and creaky as all get out at times, the biggest problem being its prologue. The prologue’s there to give us an immediate hook, something scary happening before the credits roll. In and of itself it’s fine. I liked the touch that kids at a party would keep filming with their phones as one of their peers had a psychotic breakdown. But it hobbles the plot later on because you have to ask yourself why the two characters in possession of the hand would keep messing around with it after.

We’re already on shaky ground anyway, as it’s obvious to both us and the characters that something supernatural and dangerous is happening, yet they keep doing it. Their age makes up for some of this, they’re kids whose brains and sense of permanence haven’t fully formed, but as characters, they do mark it hard to believe in them sometimes, let alone sympathise when what happens is wholly their fault. Locking hands with the monkey’s paw once is understandable, but once you know what it does, why would you do it again?

To be fair, I did like a scene where the characters are messing about with the hand, each taking turns with it as if it’s a bong that they’re passing between themselves. The film has grit and authenticity about its world that works hugely in its favour. I found some members of the cast annoying, but not because their parts were badly written or their acting wasn’t good. They’re convincingly young, dumb, and temperamental. Wilde is great as Mia, and Bird feels genuinely vulnerable as Riley, so that when he’s attacked by the spirits it’s more shocking than if neither the Philippou brothers nor Bird had given him personality.

I think what makes Talk to Me a much better take on its tropes – social media, smartphones, games, and ghosts – than Truth or Dare is its smaller scale. It’s a more intimate film. Slower-paced, but all the greater for it, and with a perfectly tied bow of an ending that would distinguish a classic ghost story.

Rating: 3/4