They Talk

A thriller with its plot-heavy scenes creating a weighty, incomprehensible story. Meanwhile the impressive acting surfaces here and there amidst all the unanswered questions. The documentary film subplot, itself, is abandoned, so too many of the movie's characters disappear, leaving the effective protagonist alone with too many computer scenes, and too many drone shots. There's a gorgeous synthesizer score and the special effects are top-notch--and practical. Only a few obnoxious stutter-cuts interrupt what the director maintains in traditional style and pace. Rocio Morales is superb as the movie's most tragic character. There's a large quantity of atmosphere, and the movie's art direction and locations support this. If only the writers and editors had collaborated more on communicating suspenseful information over just creating beautifully photographed suspense, and some quality gore.

Well, the synopsis for this 2021 horror mystery "They Talk" definitely sounded interesting enough. This movie was one that came in under the radar, but sadly as quietly as it came it also went. Writers Vinicio Canton, Stefano Ceccarelli and Chiara Barbo just didn't manage to put together something extraordinary here.

Sure "They Talk" had potential, but the storyline just collapsed in on itself, suffering from a slow narrative and having absolutely nothing entertaining or worthwhile to offer. So the script made for a poor transition from paper to screen. I certainly wasn't enjoying the storyline here as directed by Giorgio Bruno.

There were a couple of interesting enough visuals here and there throughout the course of the prolonged 96 minutes that the movie ran for. But it just wasn't enough to do much of anything to alleviate the shortcomings of a boring and mundane script.

I wasn't familiar with the cast ensemble in the movie, and that is usually something I enjoy when I watch movies. However, in "They Talk" it just didn't really count for much of anything, since the actors and actresses virtually had nothing worthwhile to work with in terms of storyline, dialogue or character development.

For a horror mystery then "They Talk" was just downright boring and pointless. There wasn't anything scary here, and even the voices and their messages were just worthy of a single shrug of the shoulders.

My rating of "They Talk" lands on a generous three out of ten stars.

I want to start with what bothered me the most about this movie. They try to sell really hard that this movie is filmed in America - they make a show of panning down to a Missouri license plate; the local diner (called "Eats") has American flags draped in no less than two or three places throughout the interior; the menus in the diner each feature an American flag imprinted on them; the cabin in the woods has an American flag flying outside.... Yet every single actor/actress in the movie has an foreign accent, despite two of the main characters supposedly raised since they were young in an orphanage in America. The roads don't look anything like roads in America. The hospital looks less like a modern American ER and more like a hospital you might see in the 1930's. The movie was filmed in Italy with Italian actors. Why on Earth would you try so hard to make it look otherwise. I'd have enjoyed it more if they'd played up the Italian angle - but as a second (third?) generation Italian immigrant, I might be slightly biased.

OK, so the movie itself.... This is your basic EVP (electronic voice phenomenon) flick up until about the last thirty minutes or so. Up until then, it's a little slow, but then things get weird. I'm not really sure why what happens happens. It leaves you with more questions than answers.

The acting is ok. It does feel like a low budget film, though, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. It just is what it is. It's good for a weekend night, "escape from reality" flick but don't expect anything spectacular.

I caught right at the start the opening credits mentioning Calabria, and realized this was basically an Italian movie. I was concerned because the listing said English, which worried me that I would be watching a badly dubbed version, but in retrospect that probably would've been preferable.

This is a film set in America, and almost none of the main characters has an accent that could discernably be called American. This is not a problem since America is a land of many people except that the main character is described as having been born and raised in America, in Missouri, and has a Scandinavian accent thick enough to have a speaking role in "The Last Kingdom" or "Vikings".

It's all mildly amusing but it's not the reason this movie is so bad. That falls almost entirely on the writing and the overall acting.

Firstly, the depiction of EVP or Electronic Voice Phenomenon is absolutely cartoonish. The incredible crystal clear audio clarity with which these ghostly voices are picked up makes it as though people would be unable to record anything anywhere because they'd be constantly picking up ghosts talking over everything else.

A whole lot of things depicted here are very cartoonish in how they come across, which speaks a lot to either a gross misunderstanding of the subject matter, a severe lack of research, or a very bad writer.

There's constant little things that break what little immersion this film has. The way a whole lot of the dialogue and behavior comes across feels like it was written by someone who has never gone outside and experienced the real world. It comes across as if written by a child imagining this is what grownups sound and act like.

One of the better comparisons to this sort of dissonance I can make is the example of trying to translate a story using a computer translator rather than a native speaker.

On top of this, the story itself is just a boring mess that seems to be trying to set up something, but never actually gets around to it. Then it goes for a completely incoherent twist ending that feels as though a whole lot of the original idea ended up being cut out and they forgot to update the ending accordingly.

Okay what can you say about a low budget foreign movie, the tries surprisingly hard to pretend that it was filmed in America. Everyone speaks with a European accent, but we have American flags flying everywhere and a Missouri license plate on one of the vehicles. Most of the actors/characters really need to wash their hair and take a bath, it has a dirty, grungy, smoky feel to the entire movie, which really does nothing to enhance the movie, and actually took me out of it a number of times because all I could think of is my God they need to take a shower. The pacing is incredibly slow, nothing unusual for a low budget foreign horror movie. The plot overall is predictable and plodding. Acting is so so, playing bunch of people that you can't understand why they have anything to do with each other, but that's pretty much the norm for modern horror films. It feels low budget, it looks low budget, it is low budget. Not that that's necessarily a bad thing, but it just gets old after a while. Since it's basically a free movie on a free service, there's not a lot to complain about. Would I watch it again? No. Do I regret watching it? Not really. It gave me something to listen to while I was folding clothes.