There always seems to be one horror movie that gets a surprising amount of hype and positive word of mouth every year, and I guess 2023's the year of Talk To Me, even if it was first screened in 2022. 2022 felt like it was the year of Barbarian. 2020 and 2021 I don't remember - I think everyone was too busy being scared by COVID. 2019 might've been Midsommar, but perhaps more so because in 2018 it was Hereditary, and both were directed by Ari Aster. 2015 was The VVitch, 2014 possibly The Babadook, and so on...

Maybe it's not an exact pattern, but at the same time, maybe it's the nature of horror as a genre, and the emotional reactions it inspires, that make at least one big release of every year just take off and steal the thunder of other comparable movies, thanks to generating serious buzz. Traumatising critics and viewers alike (in a good way) also likely helps. And Talk To Me is definitely one of the more upsetting horror movies in recent years, and one that successfully gets under your skin. Horror movies unpacking intense themes regarding death, grief, and other not-very-fun things while also being traditionally scary continually proves to be a winning combination.

Characters here are already grappling with various tragedies before the dead start communicating with them a little too much, and things progressively spiral out of control. Talk To Me succeeds in pulling you in quickly. It's paced fast, too, and this does result in some mild implausibilities and a few things that feel a tiny bit lacking from a writing perspective (a character has no restraints or proper security in a hospital, despite them doing incredibly dangerous things to themselves while being hospitalized, and a key character is weirdly absent from the whole climax - things like that which I barely noticed because everything thunders along very fast, but thought about more once the film was over).

Shortcuts are taken, which stops it from being a perfect horror movie, but it does ensure it's a continually engaging horror movie where I never felt bored for a second. The performances are very good, the editing and visuals are both very strong, and complaints about small aspects of the writing aside, the core concept is creative and much of the dialogue is well-written. I do understand the hype around this one. I found it both unsettling and very entertaining (in a dark, sort of mortifying way).