I think Talk to Me is kind of the story of Regan MacNeil if she chatted up Captain Howdy using W. W. Jacobs' monkey's paw. I think it fits squarely into the “teens fuck around with the paranormal and get fucked by the paranormal” subgenre, which isn't really a thing, but it might as well be. Of course, in these films, teenagers apparently live in a world bereft of horror films, as they seem to know nothing about the concept of playing stupid games and winning stupid prizes.
The Exorcist may be the progenitor of all of them. And the classic ingredients in this kind of story are typically a young person with a missing piece, some kind of mechanism of communication, and an evil force who effectively offers to make them whole again, but works toward their undoing instead. Which always seemed counterintuitive to me because you know clearly In that situation, I would be all in. “You want to do what, now? Take over my body and my soul make me suffer unspeakably? Can we just skip to the part where I have the unlimited evil powers and can float around in my bedroom?” Because I'm like Dr. Faustus lighting all the lights. (I think that is probably — definitely — the first Gertrude Stein reference here at Scare U.)
I think the Evil Dead films and certainly their successor Cabin in the Woods involve kind of involuntary summonings and accidental bear pokings. Tibor Takacs made The Gate in 1987, in which little Stevie Dorff and his neighbor friend access the further reaches of hell through the mechanism of a heavy metal album that's played backwards. Night of the Demons (1988) is about a bunch of dumb kids who have a seance in an abandoned funeral parlor and bad things ensue. The Haunting in Connecticut also features a young cancer patient and an old funeral parlor. Ouija and Ouija: Origin of Evil also traffic in these kinds of tropes. Things that we've seen and discussed, like Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, is a great example with a damaged teenage girl who opens a forbidden book, and gets her friends disappeared to the netherworld. Sinister, with Ethan Hawke, is a little bit different in that it's a father with some damage who gets his kiddos roped into a supernatural murder plot, but it's through watching cursed movies.
The entire cold open of Talk to Me is very much like the cold open of The Ring, but obviously amped up to 11. And of course The Ring, with its cursed videotape and pre-internet demonic contagion, has some kind of similarity. I could not get that association to the girls in the opening of The Ring out of my brain as we follow big brother Cole toward the bedroom door where his kid brother Duckett is melting down in Talk to Me.
And I think, with the live streaming angle, it has some echoes of things like Unfriended from 2015 and Host from 2020, and also Rob Savage's horrible, hateful Dashcam from 2021. In Talk to Me, when we get the glimpses of the tortured spirits of the dead pawing at poor Riley in some bardo, I thought there were shades of The Further in Insidious.
While it may not be entirely original, I do think that the experience of seeing it was a rewarding one and it speaks to that other old trope in which your experience of a horror movie is completely different watching it on a big screen with Dolby Surround Sound. It was good to remind myself of that, because as I was anticipating our recording, I let it slip that I was scooching and whooching and squirming and worming and scrunching down in my seat while I was watching it. And I think for an old horror movie veteran like me, that sort of visceral first experience really can't be overvalued.
To listen to our episode on Talk to Me, click here.
Bradford Louryk