Movie Review Talk to Me

Talk to Me (2023) 

Directed by Danny Phillipou, Michael Phillipou

Written by Danny Phillipou, Bill Hinzman 

Starring Sophie Wilde, Alexandra Jensen, Joe Bird, Miranda Otto, Otis Dhanji, Zoe Terakes 

Release Date July 27th, 2023 

Published July 12th, 2023 

Talk to Me is a fresh take on the teen horror genre. It's filled with clever, terrifying ideas, and it features a lead performance that is haunting and brilliant. We've been subjected to a lot of bad teen horror movies, movies overflowing with familiar tropes and irritating, repetitive jump scares. Talk to Me has familiar elements but it is elevated via stylish direction, and the precise deployment of violence. The film has jump scares but the pacing is measured to a specific degree so that when the violence ramps up, in one very specific, and completely terrifying scene, it has more impact than if we'd been subjected to repeated violence throughout. 

Talk to Me stars the absolutely incredible Sophie Wilde as Mia. Mia has recently lost her mother to what may have been a suicide, though she is convinced it was an accidental overdose. As happens when such a traumatic event occurs in a family, her mother's death has estranged her from her father, Max (Marcus Johnson), who makes attempts to reach her throughout the movie as the actual plot is unfolding and engulfing Mia's life.

Thankfully, though she is distant from her father, Mia is welcomed into the home of her best friend, Jade (Alexandra Jensen), where she is treated like an extra sibling to Jade's brother, Riley (Joe Bird), and another daughter to Jade's mom, Sue (Miranda Otto). The level of familiarity and comfort in this family dynamic is the foundation for what comes next, the horrific fracturing of this family unit via the horrors that come from, frankly speaking, Mia's poor choices. 

Find my full length review at Horror.Media 

Movie Review Annabelle Creation

Annabelle Creation (2017) 

Directed by David F. Sandberg 

Written by Gary Dauberman 

Starring Stephanie Stigman, Talitha Bateman, Lulu Wilson, Anthony La Paglia, Miranda Otto

Release Date August 11th, 2023 

I tried, I really did. I tried to give Annabelle: Creation the benefit of the doubt. I tried to go with the idiot premise that demons possess dolls and small children and are capable of massive amounts of destruction and horror but are constantly thwarted by locked, wooden doors. I gave this movie the chance to explain where the Annabelle doll that has been passed down from the equally silly The Conjuring movies came from and how it came to be a cursed item. I tried, but nothing in the movie convinced me why it was frightening, suspenseful or even mildly discomforting.

Annabelle Creation is intended as the origin story for the doll that we’ve seen locked away in the home Ed and Lorraine Warren, the heroes/real-life con-artists, from The Conjuring movies. Indeed, Annabelle is creepy looking but not in a menacing way — more of a, "Why did anyone think this would be attractive to anyone?" sort of way. Seriously, what child would ever want to own a two and a half foot tall, bug-eyed, pig-tailed, proto-dummy like Annabelle? If you’re thinking that Annabelle: Creation might answer that question you are sorely mistaken.

After we are introduced to the tragic backstory of the man who created the Annabelle doll, played dutifully by a disinterested Anthony La Paglia, we are thrust several years into the future where La Paglia and his now bed-ridden wife, played by a slumming-for-a-paycheck Miranda Otto, have taken in half a dozen orphans and their Nun caretaker, Sister Charlotte (Stephanie Sigman). We already know this is a terrible idea because we know what movie we are seeing; the girls meanwhile are about to go through the motions of the plot and try to convince us we haven’t seen all of this before.

Find my full length review at Horror.Media