Another movie that I’ve been meaning to check out and this one comes from Australia. I’m glad that A24 is out there giving people the chance to make some weird horror movies. I don’t always like them as much as other people (I bounced off Hereditary for instance) but it does mean that sometimes you get something like Midsommar or this.

The movie centers around a brand new party craze that has been going viral with the local Aussie teens. You light a candle, you grab a ceramic hand, you say “talk to me”, and you will see a ghost. That’s not enough, though, because if you then say “I let you in” you get possessed until they can get the hand away from you and blow out the candle. When Mia goes to have her turn, it ends up going longer than the 90 second limit and things start getting out of hand (pun very much intended). Now she is seeing things even without the hand and has to deal with the spirits and their agenda.

I love this movie for the portrayal of not only the way in which idiot teens would totally jump on this kind of thing but how it turns into a party trick to be filmed and posted for laughs. After the teens get possessed they end up experiencing a rush from it from having this out of body experience. Treating ghosts like a NOS whippet to be passed around is such a wonderful metaphor for drugs. Literally letting death into your body and losing control just so you can have a brief period where you are free from your own pain and trauma. Mia getting more and more lost in the experience as she tries to cope with the anniversary of her mother’s suicide is shows how lost you can get in addiction, even when it gets to the point where it isn’t even offering the same escape it used to.

There aren’t a lot of jump scares in the movie as most of the film ends up being this slow but constantly ramping tension of Mia’s struggle with the spirit world. Which isn’t to say it’s one of those entirely atmospheric slow burns as there are plenty of very fucked up sequences with some bloody effects that never go over the top but are just real enough to get under your skin. I wont get into specifics to avoid spoilers but the way the movie interweaves the imagery and events from the beginning into the ending of the film is great. I also love the fact that you light the candle to “open the door” and there is so much background talk about closing doors and even Mia’s mom is said to have been blocking a closed door when she died. Just thematically very fun to have those little details.

I think this is a fantastic movie and definitely recommend a watch. This is going on my short list of modern horror that truly gets it right.

Score: 5 out of 5