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“Talk to Me” on Blu-ray/DVD/Digital!

The two-year anniversary of the death is a solemn time for Mia to mourn the hard loss of her beloved mother who took her own life, or at least that is what her father tells her. Feeling uneasy by her father’s account that circulates doubt uncontrollably, Mia pries her way into her best friend Jade’s family for comfort and becomes equally amiably with Jade’s younger brother, Riley, as like another sister. When social acquaintances post viral videos of peers supposedly being possessed by an embalmed hand of a psychic for party games, Mia is eager to participate. All is fun and games with the dead inhabiting and speaking through the hand holder for a limited time until Riley’s spirt takes a violent turn, leaving the boy severely injured and in a comatose state after exhibiting Mia’s mother possessing him. Obsessed to speak again with late mother, Mia uses the hand to talk to the dead and learns Riley’s soul is stuck on the other side and being tortured by the countless, malign spirits.

Grief can be so powerfully self-destructive that holding an embalmed hand, becoming connected with the grotesque spirit, and letting the shadow world possess you can be addictive and even as far as a parlor game to pursue answers or a desperate release from suffering. The 2022, breakout Australian production “Talk to Me” explores that forced hand of grief, literally, with a socially pressuring aspect that can be contagiously engrossing and collaterally harmful if unchecked. The Southern Australian-born brothers Danny and Michael Philippou come out swinging on their debut feature-length film penned by Danny alongside Bill Hinzman based on a concept by “Bluey” executive producer of all people, Daley Pearson. “Talk to Me” is a coproduction between The South Australian Corporation, Screen Australia, Head Gear Films, and Causeway Films with Christopher Seeto (“The Flood”), Samantha Jennings (“Cargo”), and Kristina Ceyton (“The Babadook”) producing. The film is released theatrically by A24.

“Talk to Me” opening with a young, shoulder length haired man desperately searching for his younger brother through a sea of people at a house party. The scene sets the film’s take-no-prisoners tone with begins with compassion as the older brother comes to the rescue of his disturbed, shirtless kin, trying to display the flashlight gleaming phone camera sharks who smell viral video blood in the water, when in a surprising turn of events the younger brother stabs his sibling before ramming the chef knife into his own skull. “Talk to Me” segues into the cast of teenage characters, spanning the age spectrum of 14 to 20, letting us know right off the bat that youths are on the chopping block and no one will be safe. The mostly untried cast pulls through with a trypanosome performance that gets under your skin, festering in its linger. Sophie Wilde helms being the principal lead Mia still shell shocked by the sudden death of her twinning mother two years after later. Suspicious of her father’s role in the death, Mia escapes and integrates herself into best friend Jade’s family, a role resting in between two uncomfortable rocks of being the new girl beside Mia’s onetime ex. Alexandra Jensen as Jade floats carefully portraying Mia’s friend and a pursuant tiptoe toward the relationship with Daniel (Otis Dhanji) that passively irks Mia in the form of playful jokes, side glares, and inner demons becoming fruition ones expressing desires. Sophie Wilde, on the other hand, spans the gamut with a flip of a switch soul spectrum polarized by spirit madness, grief over loss, and a fallback friendship. When Wilde turns on the darkest light of possession, when her character lets the spirit into her body, the disheveled whole of Mia lives up to the actress’s surname becoming an uninhibited periapt for the spirit within that lusts over the youngest in the room, Riley (Joe Bird), for his childlike purity and when the spirits have control of over his soul in what is an orgasmic suffering that neither is parlous fun or exciting. “Talk to Me’s” cast rounds out with Zoe Terakes, Chris Alosio, Marcus Johnson, Alexandria Steffensen, Ari McCarthy, and “Homeland’s” Miranda Otto.

“Talk to Me” is an original byproduct stemmed from the cursed fetish genre. The inexplicable mummified hand with unknown origins, thought to be once the hand of a medium, falls into the hands of a difference kind of representation. Not to be bestowed conventional tropes like an inanimate object to be feared, the mirror in “Oculus” comes to mind or the cenobite unleashing puzzle box of “Hellraiser,” the persevered curled open hand doesn’t hold that sort of malevolent power, at first. Despite its powerful connection to the purgatorial other side with frightening results of classic possession cases – levitation, catatonia, dissociative profanity and behavior, etc. – these more-or-less new generational children treat something they don’t completely understand, such as ancient, mystical artifacts and in this case, human remains to be exact, without respect and humility, using the hand as if an additive drug, parlor game, or write to go viral amongst peers. Directors Danny and Michael Philippou use the peer-pressuring viral video social commentary of their film as a sensationalized stern warning that has equal cause-and-effect results. Ostentatiously showcasing more of the adolescent revelry spree rather than the mangled, decaying, and water-bloated entities in front of them or recklessly inhabiting their bodies once let corporeally inside. For someone like the character Mia who continues to process close loss and has troubling thoughts, or maybe even delusions, regarding her father’s role in her mother’s untimely demise, she yearns for answers and when Mia receives a glimpse into what she believes is her kindred spirit mother through the vessel that is her friend Riely, aching impulses take over already crumbling judgements and she goes down the rabbit hole despite the consequences to herself, to her father, and to her adopted family.

Get a grip and take “Talk to Me’s” hand to experience the possessively powerful Philippou brothers’ debut film on a Lionsgate 2-disc Blu-ray/DVD/Digital release. The AVC encoded, 1080p high-definition, BD50 and the MPEG-2 encoded, upscaled standard definition, DVD are presented in a 2.39:1 widescreen aspect ratio. What’s achieved out of the Aaron McLisky’s through-the-looking-glass visual vignette is focus driven, claustrophobic, and engaging to be present of a reality teetering the line between two worlds. Details inarguably shine, casting a great deal of deep shadows within the hard lighting to set the ominous tone. Skin textures gleam within the light as well as coarse change with the vapid and pale makeup adjustments of the dead-entered body or even when we do brief see a condemned soul, the greatly applied contusions, decay, or bloating is reflected with great care from the infinite image detail. The release has an English Dolby Atomos output reaching the difficult crevices of the inaudible dark holes and exposing them to immense carousal and haunting zeal that makes the experience more palpable. Dialogue renders nicely through albeit a heavy-handed score that relentlessly attempts to knock down the channel-leveled door and a strong Australian accent on most of the cast may sway those who don’t have a keen and distinct diverse ear away from the film or may find discerning a challenge to channel from beginning-to-end. While most of the camera’s frame stays in medium closeup to closeup, McLisky’s able to find depth where advantageous to bring a creep building dark cloud after Mia’s one minute over willing but felt forced possession participation. English SDH and Spanish subtitles are optionally available. Special features include an audio commentary with brothers Philippou, a featurette with the cast and crew in their experience and thoughts on the film, entitled In the Grip of Terror, deleted scenes, and theatrical trailer. Behind a rigid O-slipcover imaged with the centerpiece un-ensepulchered, plaster anoint, and sanskrit-esque-ladened hand upright and in the forefront with phone flashlights dully lit in the background. The typical Blu-ray snapper houses the same slipcover image slipped in between the plastic sheeting whilst the two discs are held on snapper locks on each side of the interior accompanied by an insert for the digital download. Both discs are pressed with the same font and coloring on in reverse with a baby blue stark against white. The 95-minute minute feature is region A locked and is rated R for strong bloody violence, some sexual material, and language. “Talk to Me” is utterly and terrifyingly fresh and freakish in more so with the naturality toward the touching and the facetious ways with an embalmed hand that’s a one-way personal radio to the dead as a means to be engaged in popular, peer-pressuring social activity and as something to prove with reckless naivety.

“Talk to Me” on Blu-ray/DVD/Digital!

Grieving parents, Jessie and Mark, aim to heal the deep wounds of the tragic and accidental death of their young son by fostering an orphan boy named Cody. After the mysterious death of Cody’s mother and having been through two concerning foster parents prior to Jessie and Mark, Cody strives to be the most sweet and loving child to his new and pleasant foster parents, but Cody has a dark secret that keeps him up at night. When Cody falls into a dream state, his subconscious imagination manifests his awe-inspiring dreams and even his worst nightmares that become deadly with the presence of the malicious Cranker Man, a dream shadow who can pluck anyone into disappearance that happens to be near the slumbering boy.

“Before I Wake” director Mike Flanagan labors over all that is supernatural, churning out more than his fair share of specter-centered storied films including “Absentia,” “Occulus,” and the more favorable sequel to “Ouija,” entitled simply enough “Ouija: Origin of Evil,” that was produced alongside “Before I Wake” in 2016. Flanagan’s knack for suspenseful tall-tale horror doesn’t pigeonhole the Salem, Massachusetts born director into producing the same terrorizing story over-and-over and while “Before I Wake” has undoubtedly a few heart-pounding horror elements, fantasy more than so strong arms the genre into a branding submission. If I may be so bold by comparing “Before I Wake” to Guillermo del Toro’s “Pan Labyrinth” might be committing, perhaps, blogger career suicide, but the draw to resemblances can’t go ignored with what “Before I Wake’s” Cody creates from his overly stimulated dreams is much more familiar to what “Pan Labyrinth’s” Olivia character imagines when she escapes the horrors of a war bred sadistic maniac, if even only in a diluted version of events.

“Superman Returns” actress Kate Bosworth headlines with co-star Thomas Jane (“The Mist,” “Deep Blue Sea”) as the unwitting foster parents who are forcing themselves back into the parenting game. I specifically was not coming to terms with Bosworth’s performance as Jessie; her facial expressions and body language, along with her tone and line deliveries, were too lifeless with rigidity and repetitiveness. So much so that I compared Bosworth to Suzanne Cryer’s impassive Laurie Beam character from HBO’s “Silicon Valley.” Unless the inexplicable amount of grieving has voided her of all emotion, like the Borg drone from “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” the role of Jessie is written with a variety of mood driven circumstances that start with her insomnia, to her willingness to not leave their home, to being carelessly exploitive with Cody. Being a fan of Thomas Jane since 2004’s “The Punisher,” I might be a bit biased, but Jane had more range with the ability to switch back-and-forth between mixed attitudes and sentiments, making the dynamic between Jane and Bosworth clunky and awkward. To round off the trio of main actors, you might recognize the pint sized actor playing Cody as Jacob Tremblay from the 2015 Oscar Winning Brie Larson film “Room” portraying an innocently pitiful dreamer with an unquenchable thirst to be loved.

The Flanagan and Jeff Howard co-authored storybook script, intentionally or not, borrows heavily from psychoanalyst Sigmund Frued’s dream interpretation theory that wishful fulfillments are more common in children. Previous day activity, or day residue, has influential properties on a child’s dream, much like with Cody in this story, and Cody’s dreams are written to be an exaggerated fruition, fulfilling his desires and illuminating his emotions to the brightest or the darkest extent. Like many other films that involve the misunderstanding of children, adults Jessie and Mark blindly understand all the possibilities of Cody’s uncontrollable gift, exploiting Cody’s powers for their own greed. I did find that I love Jane’s Mark character as he tries to show Jessie the errors of her reasoning as he’s a bit of a kid himself, living vicariously through Cody with the video games and with the pizzas as if husbands, or men in general, are actually children at heart. Cody’s gift becomes a power struggle with Mark caught in the middle and the consequences of this struggle result in being the catalyst to unify Jessie and Cody as a strong bond between Mother and Son. Men totally receive the shaft in this picture where both dominant adult male figures are reduced to a forgotten or humbling state, left behind because mother knows best when it was really mother who dismantles the situation.

“Before I Wake” is a boogeyman fable of sleepless nights that independent Canadian distributor Mongrel Media presents on Blu-ray for the first time anywhere in North America on a home entertainment platform come January 10th. The film has been in a distribution limbo since U.S. theatrical distributor Relatively Media filed for bankruptcy, but, luckily for fans of the supernatural genre, Mongrel Media obtained home video rights. I was provided an online screener link, forcing my hand to not comment on the specs of the Blu-ray audio or image quality nor touch upon the bonus material, but what I can state is that the spin on the dream killer won’t stop here with “Before I wake.” Dreams, like conceptions of outer space, are vast with unlimited, unconstrained content that surrealist director Mike Flanagan has only partially tapped into by exploring the dangerously innocent perceptions fabricated from a child’s abstract mind.