I was in the minority of people who saw Talk to Me in 2022 and felt indifferent toward it. Most people either loved or hated it (Brandon enjoyed it), and while I thought the ending (and I do mean the very ending, like the last minute or so) was novel and fresh, I found the overall experience to be a fairly rote possession story with little to make it stand out. When I heard that the directors, twins Danny and Michael Philippou, had a new feature coming out, I didn’t pay much attention to it despite it getting the same kind of word-of-mouth hype that Talk to Me had. Brandon asked me if I was interested in this one and I didn’t even know what he was talking about, but it wasn’t until the movie got the approval of a couple who work at my local coffee shop (hi, Michael and Brandon P.!) that I gave this one any serious consideration. I bought the tickets for me and my viewing companions in person in advance (the only way to make sure that you both get the Tuesday discount and that the tickets don’t sell out), and the theater employee nervously asked me what I had heard about the film as I was paying. I told her I hadn’t really heard anything, and she said that people had been coming out of the film talking about how frightening and gory it was, and that she wasn’t sure she would see it. After those two incidents, I was pretty excited, and I can say I was definitely not disappointed. 

Piper (Sora Wong) is the visually impaired younger stepsister of loving, caring Andy (Billy Barratt), and the apple of her father’s eye. Coming home one day, Andy discovers his father’s dead body lying on the bathroom floor, the shower still running, and although he tries to keep Piper away, his own shock prevents him from stopping her from touching the corpse. Andy’s not quite eighteen and thus can’t take guardianship of Piper, so child services places her with a woman named Laura (Sally Hawkins), who recently lost her own daughter, Cathy. Cathy shared Piper’s visual impairment, so her home is already set up with many of the accommodations that Piper would need, like taped-down rugs. Andy, afraid of losing Piper, begs social worker Wendy (Sally-Anne Upton) to convince Laura to take him in for the next few months until he can take guardianship of Piper on his birthday. Wendy cites that Laura has had bad experiences with other foster children with a past history of violence, obliquely alluding to something in Andy’s past, but is ultimately successful in keeping the step-siblings together with Laura for the time being. Upon arrival, however, Andy is immediately treated as extraneous and unwanted; Laura calls him “Anthony” and “Andrew,” and while Piper gets set up in Cathy’s untouched bedroom, Andy gets plopped in a room that’s mostly been used for storage, stuck on a mattress that’s too short for him, directly on the floor, and an accordion pocket door that neither closes nor locks. Laura is also fostering another child whom she introduces as Oliver (Jonah Wren Phillips), who exhibits odd behavior that the audience initially dismisses as a response to trauma in whatever home he has been taken from, but which could be something more sinister.

This is a great set-up, and goes in some really great directions from there. Before we meet Piper and Andy, we are treated to a scene on a VHS tape in which various people speak Russian and there appears to be some kind of possession or exorcism ritual being performed, which includes one of the participants being “confined” within a white ring of some kind. When we see that there is a white line that Andy and Piper have to cross in order to approach Laura’s house, we’re immediately clued in that something fishy is afoot, even before we get to witness the discrepancy in the way that Laura treats her two new fosters. The gaslighting of Andy (and, to a lesser extent, Piper) begins almost immediately, as Laura deliberately ostracizes her new foster son, completely disregards his privacy by reading his text messages (above and beyond sticking him a room that he can’t even lock the door of), and even pouring her own urine on him while he sleeps heavily as a result of Laura drugging his workout powder so that he believes he’s wet the bed. It’s clear that she knows just how to manipulate a young person who doesn’t have the proper vocabulary to explain their situation to the authorities, and she uses her knowledge as a former social worker herself to goad him into aggressive behavior in order to plant the seed of the idea that he will be a poor guardian for Piper in the minds of both the girl herself and Wendy the social worker. Not simplifying matters is the fact that although Piper loved and adored her stepfather, Andy’s relationship was more complicated, as their father took his aggression out solely on his son while pampering his stepdaughter. When both were much younger, this resulted in Andy repeating that violence by physically striking Piper in an incident that she doesn’t remember but which he regrets and seeks to make amends for every day. Andy’s kindness and selflessness comes through in the way that he attempts to bond with Oliver when Laura takes Piper out for a “girls’ day,” although things go completely awry in a way that he couldn’t have foreseen, because he doesn’t yet realize that he’s in a supernatural horror story. 

Skip to the next paragraph to avoid spoilers (although they were probably the same ones as in the trailer)! Unfortunately, Laura is simply too well trusted within the social services to fall under suspicion until it’s too late. I don’t want to give too much away here since this is such a recent release and one that I think people should seek out and see for themselves, but there is a demonic entity present in the house and trapped inside of Oliver that Laura intends to use as a conduit to resurrect her daughter in exchange for Piper. (At least one person who edited the TV Tropes page for the film is operating under the assumption that Oliver is possessed by Cathy, but there are several visual indicators about what’s really happening that they must have missed.) It’s not simply that Laura wants Piper around to act as a kind of replacement for Cathy, but that she has ulterior motives that require her to isolate Piper, and Andy is standing in her way. 

This one is very effective, both in onscreen frights and in its somber tone. Expectations are effectively subverted. Throughout the film, much is made of Andy’s consistent workout routine and the bench presses that he does, but when the time comes that all of this would be most effective in saving him, he does not succeed. I got plenty of warnings about this one’s gruesome content, and I might be tipping my hand too much that I’ve been completely desensitized, but I will say that if you’re a horror fan, you’ll largely have seen much of this before, even if it’s still effective here. If you’re prone to gum/mouth/teeth nightmares, be forewarned that this one is going to set off some of those phobias. More important than all of that, however, is that this film effectively forges an emotional connection with the audience. There’s a little white lie that Andy tells Piper at the beginning of the movie to help her deal with her grief, and when that was called back to at the end of the film, I’m man enough to admit that I teared up. This one’s a real knockout. 

-Mark “Boomer” Redmond