Talk to Me is the first feature directed by Danny and Michael Philippou, twin brothers who got their start making horror-comedy shorts for YouTube, and they've hit on a clever idea in turning this paranormal activity into a kind of recreational drug. But it's even creepier to see the effect of this game on Mia and her friends, as they start filming each other in their demonic state and posting the videos on social media. The possession scenes are terrifically creepy, all dilated pupils and ghoulish makeup. Any longer than that, and the spirit might want to stay. Anyone who grips it and says "Talk to me" can conjure the spirit of a dead person and invite it to possess their body - but only for 90 seconds, max. This hand apparently once belonged to a mystic. One night at a party with her friends, Mia gets sucked into a daredevil game involving a severed hand, embalmed and encased in ceramic. A critical favorite at this year's Sundance Film Festival, it stars the superb newcomer Sophie Wilde as Mia, an outgoing teenager who's recently lost her mom. If you're looking for a much, much scarier movie about how grief can open a portal between the living and the dead, the new Australian shocker Talk to Me is in select theaters this week. I don't want to oversell this movie by suggesting that at heart it's a story of grief, but Stanfield is the one thing about it that's still haunting me days later. The movie's saving grace is Stanfield's affecting performance as a guy whose interest in the supernatural turns out to be rooted in personal loss. And while the house is an impressive piece of cobwebs-and-candlesticks production design, Simien hasn't figured out how to make it feel genuinely atmospheric. It's more bothersome that none of it is especially funny, either. None of this is even remotely scary, or meant to be scary, which is fine. Haunted Mansion has a busy, forgettable plot that exists mainly to set up all the macabre sight gags you might remember from the ride: the walking suit of armor, the self-playing pipe organ, the walls and paintings that mysteriously stretch like taffy. And there's Owen Wilson as a shifty priest, Danny DeVito as a cranky professor and Tiffany Haddish as a bumbling psychic. Rosario Dawson plays a doctor who's recently moved into the house with her 9-year-old son. He's one of a team of amateur ghostbusters investigating the weird goings-on at a manor house not far from New Orleans. The always excellent LaKeith Stanfield stars as a moody physicist with an interest in the paranormal. Neither movie is particularly good, although the new one, directed by Justin Simien of Dear White People fame, is at least an improvement on the dreadful Eddie Murphy vehicle from 2003. Given how popular the ride has been since it opened in 1969, it's perhaps unsurprising that it's inspired not one but two live-action Disney movies. It's long been a favorite of mine, too, an oasis of spooky-silly fun at the so-called Happiest Place on Earth. After a family trip to Disneyland last year, my daughter told me that her favorite ride was the Haunted Mansion.
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