This is excellent Australian horror! :: Danny and Michael Philippou's “Talk to Me” cleverly imagines a deadly craze that would easily sweep a generation—this horror movie's plausibility is one of the freakiest things about it. The social media-feeding frenzy involves spiritual possession, made possible by grasping a ceramic-encased severed hand graffitied with names and symbols that suggest a long line of previous owners. Aussie teens like Mia (Sophie Wilde), Jade (Alexandra Jensen), and eventually Jade's younger brother Riley (Joe Bird) are the latest players in such a game, which has them seeing dead people and giving them access to their tied-up bodies for 90 seconds, tops. When the spirits are "let in," the teens suddenly shoot backward in a chair (the camera jolting back with them, the sound mix dropping out), and their pupils burst into a deep black. They shiver, choke, and asphyxiate as if they are gonna die. Meanwhile, their giddy friends surround them, filming. What a rush, as a YouTuber probably once said about eating Tide pods.

It's a brilliant device for a modern horror story (Daley Pearson is credited as the concept's creator), and a franchise waiting to happen (in the case of horror, that often means a fruitful idea is intact, like when "Final Destination," "The Purge," and "Saw" first debuted.) “Talk to Me” could easily lead to a higher body count or a more directly spooky story in its sequels. But the game begins small here with a sincere pitch that aims for the gut—this first installment is about watching someone be possessed by horrible ideas of grief, and the damage their decisions inflict on their loved ones. 

There are rules for how this dance with death can be done "safely," and in a snappy montage that mixes partying with possessive play, we get a great sense of what extreme fun it can be for Mia, her friends, and the hand's current owners, Hayley (Zoe Terakes) and Joss (Chris Alosio). But everything shifts in a nifty, nasty instant when one of the spirits that overtakes young Riley turns out to be Mia's mother who died by suicide two years previous. Or at least the spirit claims to be. A freaked-out Mia forces this one communication with the dead to go on too long, putting Riley in a coma with many self-inflicted gashes on his head, an attempt by the spirit to kill his soul and fully control his body.