They Talk

This movie is incredibly slow, i don't know what other way to say it. It starts well, acting is great and is very dark and bleak but... I just lost interest along the way.

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.

Too may loose ends that were never tied up....

Not enough explanation. The flashback to the past didinot explain why anything was happening.

Just incoherent.......

You may not even know what is going on.

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.

Too bad the storyline died halfway through . It could've been a descent movie....but it just got stuck in its own bullcrap . No scares....little suspense...lost interest.