Talk To Me

“Talk To Me” had so much hype that maybe it was impossible to live up to the expectations the Internet built up for it. It definitely did not meet those expectations. That's not to say it's a bad film, because it's not. But it's not the next coming of “The Exorcist” that a lot of the early publicity would have you believe.

The premise for “Talk To Me” is the coolest part of the entire film, and one that becomes very hard to build upon in the second half. The premise is this: a bunch of teens acquire a magic, cursed, conduit (whatever you want to call it) hand. By shaking hands with it and saying “talk to me” you are able to speak to spirits. By saying “I let you in”, they enter a brief period of possession that turns out to create a type of high for the kids. But much like drugs or alcohol, too much of good thing can be catastrophic. See? The premise is excellent.

The first half of the film that sets this up is easily the most interesting. But the teens are so well written as jerk teenagers that I found it really hard to like any of them. Just like when you see teenagers at a mall or a swimming pool going out of their way to be obnoxious and loud, you don't think “right on, can't wait to see what they do next”, you think “I can't wait to not be around them”. And that's the reaction I felt to the characters. The acting is good, great even from the teens, but I was really rooting for the evil spirits to do some dirty work.

The second half of the film slows way down and focuses on just one of the teens for the most part, but this shift made it much less interesting. Her obsession with speaking to the spirits was an intriguing direction, but it takes way too long to pay off in any meaningful way. And when it finally does, the results are just OK.

There are a few really cool sequences in the film, and the finale (although way too drawn out) has an excellent few final frames. But still, the best part about this movie is the idea they come up with early on about the hand. The good news here is they'll be able to do more with this idea in the future as a sequel is already greenlit. And I can easily see this producing some great movies as a franchise. It just needs some characters you can root for.

6.5/10