TALK TO ME (2023)

Name: TALK TO ME (2023)
Item: TALK TO ME (2023)
Author: Jessilyn Lancaster

"Headline"

Content: -3 Excessive sex, violence, immorality, and/or worldview problems. (Sometimes excessive content such as violence is in otherwise redemptive movies.)

Entertainment Quality:

	None	Light	Moderate	Heavy
Language
Violence
Sex
Nudity

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What You Need To Know:

TALK TO ME follows the disastrous consequences of a group of teenagers who use an embalmed hand to commune with the spirits of the dead. They allow these spirits to take over their bodies for 90 seconds. One girl, Mia, begins to see the spirits even after she’s let go of the hand. The demonic spirits deceive her by blurring the lines between what is real and what is not until her life is utterly destroyed.

TALK TO ME is a tour-de-force in production frugality, narrative pacing and striking visual effects. Surprisingly, it portrays demonic temptation with remarkable accuracy. For example, the spirits rely on deception. However, the movie commits a grave spiritual error and omits any acknowledgement or reference that there is a divine power greater than any diabolical force. TALK TO ME serves as a warning against communing with evil spirits, but it offers no salvation or redemption once that sin has been committed. That crucial error, as well as the movie’s bloody violence, heavy foul language and lewd content, makes TALK TO ME unacceptable and worthy of extreme caution.

Content:

(OO, B, C, LLL, VVV, S, AA, DD, M):
Dominant Worldview and Other Worldview Content/Elements:
Strong occult worldview that, however, realistically portrays demonic temptation (the evil spirits rely on imitating loved ones and deceiving people to harm themselves or others) and serves as a warning to viewers, but movie offers no salvation or redemption (for example, damnation is inevitable once the sin of communing with spirits is committed), and no power, especially divine power, is capable of stopping the demonic evil from taking hold of a person’s soul, plus two characters are said to be Christian, but nothing more occurs along that line;
Foul Language:
At least 22 “f” words, 14 other obscenities and one Jesus profanity;
Violence:
Very strong and strong, sometimes bloody, scary violence includes man stabs another person and then himself fatally, boy smashes head against hard surfaces repeatedly in an attempt to kill himself, boy attempts to rip out his own eye, teenager slaps herself repeatedly in the head, teenage girl stabs her father in the neck with a pair of scissors, teenager tries to push a boy in front of moving cars but ends up jumping herself, brief scene of bloody damned spirits torturing a boy, and most of these violent acts are done while possessed by an evil spirit;
Sex:
Verbal references to sexual activity, animated dead person sucks on a teenage boy’s toes, teenage boy makes suggestive gestures while under demonic possession, teenage girl contemplates hooking up with her friend’s boyfriend;
Nudity:
No nudity;
Alcohol Use:
Verbal references to underage alcohol use;
Smoking and/or Drug Use and Abuse:
Teenager smokes a cigarette, and there are verbal references to drug use; and,
Miscellaneous Immorality:
Demons use deception (including outright lies) to trick people into committing grievous sins, a woman is said to have committed suicide, and her husband lied to their daughter about it, and a father and daughter are depicted having a tense, difficult relationship.

More Detail:

TALK TO ME follows the disastrous consequences of a group of teenagers who use an embalmed hand to commune with the spirits of the damned. By uttering the incantation, “Talk to me; I let you in,” they allow these spirits to take over their bodies for 90 seconds. Chaos ensues when one girl, Mia, begins to see the spirits even after she has let go of the hand.

TALK TO ME exemplifies the time-honored horror genre tradition of stretching a budget to impressive lengths to deliver a cinematic experience beyond the resources available to the filmmakers. The movie could easily pass for four or five times its 4.5-million-dollar production cost. Its cinematography, sound design, and visual effects are stunning, but none of these could stand out without the support of a masterful screenplay (a tour-de-force in narrative pacing) and Sophie Wilde’s gut-wrenching performance as the troubled and ultimately doomed Mia.

Surprisingly, TALK TO ME portrays the reality of demonic temptation with remarkable accuracy (apart from the typical Hollywood conflation of damned human spirits with actually diabolical spiritual beings). The spirits that indwell Mia and her friends rely on imitating loved ones and preying on emotional and mental vulnerabilities to deceive their targets into harming themselves or other people. This squares well with Christian demonology, but there is a key flaw. The movie doesn’t acknowledge that there is a God who renders these forces of evil powerless. While horror movies like THE EXORCIST, THE CONJURING or the many adaptations of Dracula display the power of Christ and Christian symbols to combat darkness, TALK TO ME presumes that the damnation of those who meddle in the supernatural is inevitable. It serves as a poignant warning against the use of artifacts or other means to commune with the dead. However, it offers no salvation or redemption once that sin has been committed. That crucial spiritual error, as well as the movie’s sequences of bloody violence, heavy foul language and sexual references, makes TALK TO ME unacceptable and worthy of extreme caution.

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Quality:

- Content: -3