Children are going to do silly stuff. However what does being terminally on-line do to IRL relationships when your complete web is within the palm of your hand? In that world, what does actual connection even seem like?
These have been a number of the many questions posed by Discuss to Me, the brand new horror movie from directing duo Danny and Michael Philippou. This film isn’t actually in regards to the web, which kinds an invisible presence within the background, reaching in to affect the characters’ lives. In that manner, it’s not in contrast to the deceased spirits the movie’s protagonists are attempting to contact.
However I’m getting forward of myself.
Discuss to Me facilities on Mia (Sophia Wild), a teen who turned shut with brother-sister pair Riley and Jade (Joe Chicken and Alexandra Jensen) following the loss of life of her mom. At a home social gathering, one of many trio’s buddies produces a mysterious ceramic hand, etched with cryptic writing. Gentle a candle, maintain the hand, say the titular line, and the totem can deliver anybody face-to-face with a random lifeless individual’s ghost. With one other voice command, the hand may even let the spirit into their physique for a short time.
Whereas the premise seems like so many different films about teenagers dabbling at nighttime arts, every of the seances are shot like they’re in your stoner pal’s basement in faculty. One after the other, the youngsters are possessed whereas the others pull out their telephones and snort at how strung out they get. Then the youngsters put up the movies on-line, regardless of their buddies’ protests.
With this framing, a lot of the horror within the movie comes not from anonymous hell spawn, however from the callousness with which friends bully one another—and the worry of dropping what discovered household you continue to have. The truth is, for a lot of the movie, letting a lifeless individual possess the youngsters’ our bodies is sort of portrayed as innocent enjoyable. Don’t keep possessed for too lengthy; don’t take too excessive a dose of the underworld—however so long as you’re protected, it ought to be wonderful.
Issues solely begin to go off the rails when the spirits develop into extra acquainted. This ties in to the movie’s themes of connection, grief, and coping mechanisms. However what I discover most fascinating is how the characters are egged on by the stress of social media.
Whereas that’s not the main focus of the film, it’s laborious to keep away from, on condition that the administrators bought their begin on YouTube. The twins have been creating movies since earlier than they have been youngsters, and in at the very least one occasion, one in all them was arrested for a stunt that concerned driving a automotive full of water.
It’s laborious to not really feel that further weight when the telephones come out. Children are being peer-pressured to take a success of supernatural powers that none of them can management. And once they get freaked out or terrified by what they expertise, properly, that’s #content material, child.
Discuss to Me doesn’t dwell on the web itself—there’s no montage of likes and feedback and even any indication of whether or not anybody’s watching the movies in any respect. The film issues itself extra with how the stress to carry out can have an effect on the one who’s captured on digital camera.