#160: Talk to Me

Release Date: July 28th, 2023

Format: Streaming (Netflix)

Written by: Bill Hinzman and Danny Philippou

Directed by: Danny Philippou and Michael Philippou

3 Stars

Talk to Me is a scary and entertaining debut from first-time filmmakers (and brothers) Danny and Michael Philippou. The story involves a MacGuffin, in this case a taxidermied human hand, that when held can put you in touch with the dead when you light a candle and recite the fateful words, “Talk to me.”  

Just make sure that somebody is there to take the demonic hand away from you and blow out the candle before 90 seconds elapses, or else you might be possessed by the summoned dead person forever.

Like many great film MacGuffins, it’s a little hokey and doesn’t make much sense, but who cares? We’re here for the scares.

What did bother me about the movie was its striking similarity to the brothers’ other film, Bring Her Back. After 20 minutes or so of Talk to Me, I found myself simply looking for the common ground between the two movies (not that it’s hard to find). 

I wrote more about this phenomenon in my Bring Her Back review. Here I’ll just say that the two films, as effective as they are, are distractingly similar.    

And in researching Talk to Me, it appears the brothers’ third film will be a sequel to it. 

Back to the well I suppose, but it might run dry soon if the brothers can’t expand their bag of tricks.