For a lot of fans of modern horror, the boutique label A24 has become synonymous with the genre. But if we’re being honest, most of the movies the revered indie film distributor releases aren’t particularly scary. Sure, a few scenes from Hereditary will always give me nightmares, but in the last few years, A24’s horror offerings have leaned more toward social satire (Opus) and surreality (Lamb) and further away from outright terror. However, one recent movie bucks that trend.
Released in 2023, Talk to Me is a downright terrifying indie filmed on a shoestring budget in Australia and distributed by A24. It was a critical and commercial hit, breaking the record for A24’s highest-grossing horror movie ever. (Hereditary previously held that title, which perhaps proves genuine scares are box office gold.)
Talk to Me is also currently streaming on Netflix, but it’s set to leave the platform at the end of September. (Don’t worry, it’ll be available on HBO Max in October.) Here’s why this movie is worth checking out, and what to know before you do.
Talk to Me stars Sophie Wilde as Mia, a teenager living in the suburbs of Adelaide, Australia and struggling to process the death of her mother a year earlier. At a high school party one night, a classmate pulls out a severed embalmed human hand and reveals that it can be used to communicate with the dead. The teens take turns experiencing this ritual (with language that makes it a clear metaphor for experimenting with drugs), and Mia quickly becomes obsessed with the possibility of reconnecting with her mother. She breaks a crucial rule — never use the hand for more than 90 seconds in a row — and inadvertently invites a deadly demon into her world.
Directed by twin brothers Danny and Michael Philippou (also known as RackaRacka for their VFX-focused YouTube Channel), Talk to Me is terrifying on multiple levels. There’s the concept of the hand itself and the powers it contains, which the Philippous bring to life through their mastery of both special and practical effects. Some of the film’s most frightening early scenes rely on jump-scare cuts revealing the rotting and deformed corpses this ritual momentarily brings back to life.
There’s also the psychological horror of Mia’s loss, which casts a shadow over the entire film and helps explain why she makes such a deadly mistake. Unlike so many other movies where the protagonist has to do something stupid and nonsensical to set up the plot, Mia’s actions in Talk to Me always make sense. The fact that the audience can empathize with each horrible choice, even as everyone around her suffers, makes the horror that much more potent.
A horror movie is ultimately only as good as its ending, and Talk to Me delivers. The movie builds masterfully to a devastating climax that will have you clenching muscles you didn’t even know existed, followed by a brutal final twist that may catch even the biggest fans of the genre by surprise.
Danny and Michael Philippou returned in May 2025 with Bring Her Back, which loosely connects to Talk To Me, and even includes a secret (and pretty much invisible) Sophie Wilde cameo. That film is even more disturbing than their first movie, but it lacks the comedy and thrills that made Talk to Me such a success. Those moments of laughter and levity make the jump scares even more effective, which is arguably why Talk to Me is so damn spooky. It’s a reminder that while social commentary and trippy visuals are great, but sometimes, nothing beats the purity of a bloodcurdling horror movie.
