Talk to Me is a exceptionally strong debut from the Philippou brothers. To preface, I've known their YouTube channel and their short videos from back in the day but haven't watched them in a long while. The fact they got a official movie to come out is necessary of praise on it's own. Very skilled filmmakers. And this translated to the movie seamlessly.

Now this certainly isn't a ''youtube movie'', as in, you can feel the budget or something. Not at all. It's A24 and it feels like a A24 movie.

Directing is really strong. It's highlight is that it's snappy, moves fast. And uses scares effectively. It's not jumpscare-y in a cheap way either. It's done well and some scenes are played very straight and flat, letting the horror do it's thing. It feels refined.

On top of this, the sound design is fantastic. Really stood out to me as really well done, sold the scenes, sold moments. Just the slaps in that one scene, it's very reminiscent of their editing style in some of their youtube videos, it's super snappy and aggressive and could almost be seen as a jumpscare but it does works so well, it sells the aggression and shock. Music was good too, sometimes a little overbearing and not super memorable as in having a tun you will remember, but it supported the movie sufficiently.

Acting/characters. Good, not much to note. I wasn't blown away in particular by anyone. But the scenes that mattered never felt fake so they nailed that. Besides that totally fine. Characters and writing.. a bit weaker and the part where being a debut shows. There's just some missing logic here and there and the things they say sometimes felt somewhat far reached. None of it jarring though.

Scary factor/gore/vfx. Gore/VFX really, really good. Nothing to note besides that it's very effective. Scary factor, strong opener, and it got 2 jumps out of me. But after the first talk to me scene you get the gist. Besides that it didn't thrill me much anymore. It felt like it needed to escalate a bit more to be satisfying. But it focused more on some character and drama sections of the story. Which is fine.

That said, a great horror with a cool concept.