Disability is in Everything (Including our Villains): TALK TO ME

Warning: HARK! There are spoilers here, traveler. Take the road less littered with thought.

TW: mentions of ableism, depression, grief, and religious descriptions of the afterlife.

I haven't been traumatized by a movie in a while; although I don't agree that this movie was the most terrifying of the year, it was probably the one that warranted my worst existential crisis, encouraging a dark round of post-Christian guilt, and an unhealthy dose of afterlife panic. The only time I could remember feeling this sort of dread was when my mom put on her favorite version of A Christmas Carol (1970) and promptly turned up the volume when it came to the finale: the scene where Scrooge, although an awful capitalist who'd I rarely feel pity for, is screaming miserably under the weight of his eternal chains, causing my seven-year-old lungs to fill with ice. While freezing to death in Lucifer's personal replica of Scrooge's stiff, victorian office, we as an audience are supposed to feel a complicated mixture of remorse and justice, yet my young self, amidst my malleable and brainwashing years, could only think of one (other than wetting myself) thing. It's not right! my mind screamed. Hell is supposed to be pitchforks and fire. It's supposed to be long nails, slashing across your chest and your mouth crying for water. It's supposed to be what Pastor said. It's supposed to be like how the hymns sing. It's supposed to be tortuous, like how my school threatens. It's not supposed to be so... liminal. Not like the misery here, repeating itself over and over. Of course, when relaying these concerns to my mom, she explained that god turns his back on anyone down there, and anything the devil wants to do, he can; this frightened me, deeply. Not just because I had already begun to worry about the potential severing I could have with a god I was never able to feel or hear, but because I felt stupidly and offensively... unprepared. For these strange and other versions of hell that could exist, that I didn't know what to do with, took my offhandedness, and slammed it further down into fear town. And it was only until many years later, when the sweat of evangelical worry perspired its last, that my assuredness for my inevitable descent into flames, let alone fear for any "hell" at all, vanished. Along with that awful feeling of being metaphorically and ignorantly left with the afterlife's eternal dick in my hand.

That was until Talk To Me (2023) (dir. Danny and Michael Phillippou). Not necessarily like the last time, where images of a singular god handing me over to a sadistic, discarded angel, wrecked me, but still, that same, uncanny dread came (or maybe it was lingering there the whole time, its strength oscillating invisibly like sound waves in the body) once more. There were visuals in this movie that were disgusting, grim, and sometimes both. A common mood of the movie was frustration. Another was bursts of some really fun, really delightful party scenes (specifically the kooky, circus-like song that played in the final talk-to-me party montage) that felt like a refreshing revamp of old "teen" horror movie games like "Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board" and sitting around the Ouija board. And yet, I would say for most of the movie, the severe loneliness felt by not only the main character but certainly shared by me and (I'm assuming) others in the theater, was a force strong enough to be the sole backdrop. Long and dark hallways. Freezing isolation, unimaginable to the body. A voided, borderless life - these are all worse to me than the possibility of all of us staring up at the lid of a coffin! Devastating is the only word I had to describe Talk to Me. Incredible. But still, devastating.

Mia (Sophie Wild) is just trying to survive her grief. One of the ways that she, and everyone else on the planet, is encouraged to compact a crippling period of sorrow is by surrounding themselves with others, especially loved ones - but what if those loved ones are vocalizing how much their life would be better without you? This is the forbidden belief that online therapists and optimistic posters warn you from having. Yet, the reactions seen in Talk to Me, happen every day to people who have reoccurring episodes of trauma and pain, regardless of our world's knowledge of time and grief being non-linear, circular measures. The impatience, and the cruel expectation for Mia to "move on" is also exactly how a lot of chronically ill and disabled people are treated when navigating the grief of their own unsupported and unmet needs, but still being expected to not emotionally lean on others, for the fear of being judged or seen as "ungrateful" or "bitter". The thought of everyone leaving you behind lingers in the air like an invisible, situationally-ignored threat. Sometimes literally spoken and weaponized.

Talk to Me was awesome because of what it wasn't; there was no savior, seen constantly with a crucifix shining in the heat of an exorcist's sweaty palm. Nor was there any overwhelming force of evil, that bides its time torturing the good lambs of the world - it was humans, dealing with the wants and messes of their own lives, that ended up failing Mia. There was just the heartbreaking circumstance of a girl, not having the right people around. There was just a community, unequipped to look up and understand someone's signs of withdrawal. There was just the calloused, ironic nature, leftover in decayed corners of love; requests to reach out, call a friend, or just to plainly talk about the rolling tides of grief, have the possibility to be met with a contempt shrug. And isolating oneself into oblivion, especially when framed in the way that Talk to Me evidently showed how sinisterly we as an ableist society fall for the "put them out of their misery" lie, is not a symptom, but a response—a call for someone sincere.