Danny and Michael Phillipou’s Talk to Me is garnering praise from all sorts of places as it continues to be one of A24’s biggest success stories. The debut directors have now found themselves praised by another director who came up with low-budget horror as a staple of his early career.
Peter Jackson may be more well known these days for The Lord of the Rings, King Kong, and The Lovely Bones, but back in his native New Zealand he put together grim and grimy splatterfests such as Brain Dead (aka Dead Alive), Bad Taste, and Meet the Feebles. Even when he headed to Hollywood he didn’t entirely leave the genre behind with the horror comedy The Frighteners.
So his opinion on up-and-coming horror is worth something, and in a statement, he put out recently, it’s clear he really really likes Talk to Me.
Peter Jackson on Talk to Me
Jackson wrote, ”Talk to Me isn’t just good – it’s very very good. The best, most intense, horror movie I’ve enjoyed in years,” before going on to add that the film is “relentlessly scary and disturbing — in the best possible way.”
Strong praise indeed, and there’s plenty of similar feeling out there for the Australian supernatural horror movie. It’s been enough that a sequel is in the works, and a prequel that has already been shot has piqued the interest of the movie’s fans.
Central to Talk to Me’s plot is a creepy embalmed hand that several teens use to summon spirits for an unusual high. Of course, someone takes it too far and terrible things happen. There was pleading online for a replica of that hand to be made, and it looks like A24 is already working on that.
