The buzz around Talk to Me as it made its way around the festival circuits has been nothing short of phenomenal, and people are already describing it as the breakout horror movie of the year in a year where multiple films could already claim that title. Now, we non-festival goers can get a hint why as the first Talk to Me trailer, from first-time directors Danny & Michael Philippou, landed today, and it seems incredibly creepy.
The premise of the movie may not strike anyone as too original, as a group of idiot young people get together and mess around with forbidden forces they shouldn’t. In this particular instance, it is a strange hand that allows the group of friends to speak with the dead until one of them falls too far into the other side and bad things start happening. Why these people haven’t ever seen a horror movie themselves and don’t understand this is exactly what will happen when you get together in a room and mess with occult forces isn’t clear, but things start going very poorly.
Since the dawn of horror, this kind of story has been a trope, but it’s how a film works with the tropes that makes it special. Talk to Me evidently works with them very, very well, creating a tense and horrifying movie that adds to A24’s already stellar stable of horror movies. They even go as far as giving their logo a fun little twist with the deforming hand thing. They may or may not have a fantastic horror movie on their hands, but what they definitely have is a fantastic trailer, which balances out the scary without revealing too much of what actually happens in Talk to Me.
The movie stars Sophie Wilde, Miranda Otto, Alexandra Jensen, Joe Bird, Otis Dhanji, Zoe Terakes, and Chris Alosio. Danny Philippou and Bill Hinzman wrote the screenplay.
Talk to Me will release in theaters on July 28.
