We watch several movies a week. Every Friday, we'll talk a little about some of the movies we watched that we felt were Worth Mentioning.
One horror movie lives up to the hype, the other is more troubled.
TALK TO ME (2022)
Talk to Me is a movie I was admittedly hesitant about at first. It’s the feature directorial debut of YouTubers Danny and Michael Philippou, and the idea of YouTube vloggers making a movie just isn’t an instant selling point for me. Of course, it doesn’t help that I had never heard of the Philippous before their movie was announced. I’m sure the news was much more exciting for their dedicated subscribers. But then it started to look like Talk to Me was a movie that most horror fans should start getting excited about, or at least curious to take a look at. Especially when it started receiving praise from the likes of Steven Spielberg, Peter Jackson, Jordan Peele, George Miller, and Ari Aster. Something that received that sort of positive word of mouth it something I needed to see for myself.
Written by Danny Philippou and Bill Hinzman (not the Bill Hinzman who was featured in Night of the Living Dead and made FleshEater, of course) from a concept by Daley Pearson, Talk to Me is a new variation on the classic horror cautionary tale showing us why we shouldn’t mess around with Ouija boards – or anything sort of like Ouija boards, because in this movie the method of communicating with the dead is a weird ceramic hand. Sophie Wilde takes the lead as teenager Mia, whose peer group has started throwing parties around their creepy hand thing that lets them talk to the dead. Since Mia just lost her mother to suicide a couple years earlier, she is curious about talking to people on the other side, so she starts participating in these get-togethers. Even though they go a step further than the usual Ouija seance: saying “talk to me” allows you to talk to the dead. Saying “I let you in” causes you to be possessed. Possession is usually the end of the good times, but these teens have fun getting momentarily possessed and watching their friends get possessed. Until this situation goes horribly wrong, like everyone should have expected it to from the start.
The Philippous did a great job bringing this somewhat familiar story to the screen while dropping in their own ideas and giving us interesting characters to watch and worry about. The movie gets their directing career(s) off to a roaring start, but it also features a star-making performance from Wilde, who I suspect is going to go on to some high-profile work just like they’re likely to.
When viewers start hyping something as “one of the best horror movies I’ve seen in years”, I’m not often as impressed by the movies as those hype-builders are. But in the case of Talk to Me, but I was impressed and surprised by just how good the movie was. There are some seriously unnerving things going on in this film.
NIGHT SWIM (2024)
Universal Pictures, Blumhouse Productions, and James Wan’s production company Atomic Monster had great success when they teamed up for the January 2023 release M3GAN, a killer AI-enhanced doll movie that raked in the cash and became a minor pop culture sensation. So they tried to replicate that success with the January 2024 release of the horror movie Night Swim, with which they intended to “ruin swimming pools” for viewers. But Night Swim didn’t get nearly as much attention or box office dollars as M3GAN did, and it’s not hard to understand why. Not only is the concept of a haunted swimming pool just not as fun as the idea of a dancing, killer doll, but the movie is a bit half-baked as well.
Directed by Bryce McGuire, Night Swim is based on a short film McGuire made with Rod Blackhurst back in 2014. That short had a running time of just 4 minutes and starred Megalyn Echikunwoke as a woman who has a creepy swimming experience. Echikunwoke didn’t make it over to the feature, though. Instead, the film stars Wyatt Russell as Ray Waller, a baseball player who has been forced into retirement by MS. He and his wife Eve (Kerry Condon) move into a new home with their kids Izzy (Amélie Hoeferle) and Elliot (Gavin Warren), the biggest selling point for their new property being the massive swimming pool in the backyard that Ray will be able to use for his physical therapy. Unfortunately for them, the pool is deep enough that it taps into an underground spring... and there are some nasty things in that water, because it’s not a natural spring. It’s a supernatural spring.
Night Swim is at its best in its build-up, the dramatic scenes with the Waller family as we watch them settle in at the home and start using the pool. The scary element is low-key at first (aside from the opening sequence where the previous owner’s daughter drowns in pool), but once the horror really kicks in during the second half the movie gradually unravels. There’s possession, there are aquatic ghouls that look like zombies from The Walking Dead, there are people seeping black goo from their faces... and when you type it out, that all sounds pretty cool, even though the possession is just the usual “possessed dad” stuff. But the way it’s all brought to the screen makes it feel like Night Swim has gotten desperate to find a way to make it all make sense. As a horror story, it’s not very involving or effective. But it's an okay viewing experience.
All of the actors cast as members of the Waller family do fine work in their roles. It’s just a shame actors like Russell and Condon were wasted on what happens in the second half of this movie. Sure, the idea of a haunted swimming pool isn’t that inspiring to begin with, but it still could have turned out better than it did.
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