The film revolves around a porcelain hand that a couple of dodgy teens (Zoey Terakes and Chris Alonsio) lug around in a backpack and pull out at parties; When you light a candle, hold the hand, and say "Talk to me", you see dead people. Then you invite them in so they can possess you for a bit.
So people do this, egged on by other partygoers, and everything gets filmed and everyone has a laugh. It feels genuine - yeah, of course people would use a tool to contact the dead that way. The Ouija board has historically been as much a party favour as a tool to strip money from the credulous.
This hand thing always works; People infallibly see ghosts, they get a huge buzz from getting possessed, and there are no side effects as long as you keep the ghosts in only for ninety seconds. And it's all fine, because who's going to be stupid enough to break that simple rule?
Now would be as good a time as any to introduce Mia (Sophie Wilde), a troubled teen who's still not over the death of her mother two years ago. She's gotten a bit better, thanks in part to her BFF Jade (Alexandra Jensen) - but on this night, the anniversary of her mother's death, she's feeling down and wants to go see what's the deal with all the people shaking hands with the dead on her social media. And of course she tries it, and of course she exceeds the time limit. Not by a lot, but enough for the spooks to cling to her, it seems.
Soon enough there's another party and the hand gets brought out. All's fun and games until Jade's little brother Riley (Joe Bird) wants a turn with the hand. It's an uncomfortable scene even before things inevitably go south, as it drives a wedge between Jade and Mia. And yeah, then it goes south. Things get real in an extremely gruesome way - the makeup department for the film lists more than a dozen people, and whatever they got, they deserve a raise.
The spookshow doesn't end there, of course, but a lot of the rest of the movie has to do with the psychological fallout for Mia, who wasn't in the best place to begin with. It's an unpredictable movie, and it's genuinely thrilling to see where the script goes (credit goes to Danny Philippou and Bill Hinzman, based on an idea from Daley Pearson, the guy who played Thor's roommate in those silly shorts they did in between the Marvel movies.)
There are a lot of themes and motifs to decode here - some silly, like Mia's repeatedly bringing up that she's held hands with Jade's boyfriend; har-de-har. Some are mysterious, like Mia's recurring nightmare where she can't see herself in a mirror (notice that many of the ghosts that haunt her only appear on reflections). And some overt, like how people drive others away without meaning to, leaving others to deal with their grief alone. This focus on grief and trauma might put some people off, especially as the movie is distributed by A24, which some people associate with 'elevated' horror. But the parallels are used powerfully here, driving the plot and inextricably tied to some properly scary supernatural shit. Great stuff.
One thing that it does share with other A24 horror movies is that it's not a 'fun' horror movie. I mean, it is fun (and really, really funny - Miranda Otto, as Jade's mom, gets some great lines in.) But It's not meant to be a ride in the same way a James Wan movie is; this is meant to fuck you up, it's meant to be uncomfortable.
It's a great movie - extremely well acted, well-observed, properly scary and pretty damn original. Work's already begun on a prequel and a sequel; We'll see how those turn out (if they do come out at all), but franchises have been built on much, much less.
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