Talk to Me, the directorial debut of Danny and Michael Philippou (best known for their popular but controversial YouTube channel RackaRacka), is one of my most anticipated horror movies of 2023, but I wasn’t always so keen on it. In fact, when the year started, I hadn’t even heard of it. Then, about a month ago, A24 announced that they’d be releasing the film in July, and I started to get excited about it. Not only is A24 one of my absolute favorite horror distributors in the business, but the movie also garnered a lot of buzz from its debut at the Sundance Film Festival in January. So naturally, I immediately put Talk to Me on my must-watch list, and now, we have even more reason to be excited about it: A24 finally dropped a trailer for the film.
And let me tell you, it’s awesome. Talk to Me is about a group of friends who unwittingly unleash malevolent supernatural forces while playing a Ouija-like game involving an embalmed human hand. The trailer shows us just how terrifying the consequences of these characters’ spiritual faux pas really are. The scares in these two minutes alone are top-notch, so I can’t wait to see just how bone-chilling the entire movie is.
In particular, I love that Talk to Me looks like it will shy away from jump scares and focus more on atmosphere, imagery, and creepiness instead. Sure, the trailer has a few moments that might be a bit startling, but that doesn’t seem to be their focus. Instead, it looks like the film is primarily going to try to scare us in other ways, and if these few brief clips are any indication, it’s probably going to be pretty successful.
Talk to Me is set to hit theaters on July 28.