Have you ever talked to spirits? The movie “Talk to Me” is an A24 film that was directed by the Australian Youtube channel called Rackaracka. The film first starts at a party with a guy looking for his brother. He searches until he sees him, but the brother seems unstable and ends up hurting himself badly and then dies alone shortly after.
In the beginning of the movie you are already on the edge of your seat, wondering what’s going to happen and how. The story then shifts to a girl named Mia and how she recently lost her mom. The movie continues with Mia being very distant since the incident until she decided to go to party where a hand is the main attraction. Mia then broke the number one rule of not touching the hand for longer than 90 seconds which leads to her eyes turning black as she is being possessed by a spirit.
The hand in the movie symbolizes addictions, such as drugs or alcohol, which explains why Mia then continues to play because of the thrill she felt. The main part in the movie is when Mia’s best friend, Jade, told her little brother he could not play with this hand. Mia was later convinced into letting Jade’s brother play, which led to an unexpected turn of him being possessed by what appears to be Mia’s deceased mother. This discovery then makes him exceed the 90 seconds and he ends up beating himself because Mia tries to talk to her mom through him. Natali Moreno said “she yearns for her mother so much that she is willing to go so far just to see her again.”
Mia then takes the hand home and continues to play with it which leads to her confusion about which is the real or spirit world. Jade’s brother, Riley, is trying to recover while still being possessed by this demon who is Mia’s “mom.” Joseph Orona quotes that “it’s messed up that she let Riley go through that, but it was understandable because she wanted to talk to her mom even though she knew something bad would happen later.”
The movie ends with Mia dying and Jade’s brother returning to normal, as she becomes a spirit stuck in limbo that is possessing others who are playing the same game she did. I really enjoyed this movie, especially the cinematic aspect of it, and how it shows that grief can lead you to do crazy things. Sasha Mejia states that “everyone deals with grief differently and although she didn’t deal with it in the best way possible, in the end she just wanted the truth and the hope that her mom didn’t end her life.” Overall the movie was amazing, but the main character progressively gets more and more disagreeable as the movie goes along with her delusions that she is actually talking to her mom which could make it difficult to enjoy at times.
