I don’t hold out much hope for horror films actually being able to scare me these days but this was a recommendation from our cinephile friend and it was a good way to fill an hour and a half time slot. The directors Danny and Michael Philippou deserve praise for an original concept, vivid imagery and a plot with a decent emotional core. Still this is a fairly standard story about high school kids playing around with contacting the spirits with all of the baggage of the genre including never letting the adults in on what’s really going on. It’s a good horror film but it wasn’t a particularly outstanding one and didn’t scare me.

In Adelaide, teenager Mia is struggling with the death of her mother from a sleeping pill overdose. As a result, she has been spending more time at the house of her best friend Jade. One night they sneak out with Jade’s younger brother Riley to a party. The teens there are messing around with a severed hand that has been embalmed in a plaster cast, claiming that it has supernatural abilities. Indeed they find that whoever grasps the hand is able to see the ghost of a dead person and invite that ghost to temporarily possess them. The next day, Jade’s boyfriend Joss wants to do it again so Jade hosts everyone at her house. That night the spirits seem unusually interested in Riley and when Jade leaves the room, Mia reluctantly allows Riley to get a turn. He becomes possessed by a spirit that appears to be Mia’s deceased mother. As Mia attempts to speak more with her, she extends the seance past the proscribed limit. The spirit takes hold inside Riley and causes him to violently attempt suicide by bashing his head against a table and trying to dig his eyeball out. Even as the teens hurriedly end the session and send Riley to the hospital, the spirit refuses to let go of the boy and Mia starts seeing the ghost of her mother everywhere.

The severed hand is a neat idea and allows for the attention-getting imagery that makes the film stand out so much. Yet in the end it’s effectively a prop no different from the more familiar Ouija board or any other kind of device to contact the dead. Despite its strong production values, it also falls in line with the usual conventions of teen horror films. At no point do the teens ever think to reveal the truth of what is really going on to the adults and the police are shown to be downright incompetent in dropping the investigation when there has already been a death and so much violence. There are also a conceit that is particular to this film itself, that it is somehow extremely fun to be possessed by the spirit of an apparently dead person. I think being able to merely talk to the dead would be sufficiently entertaining and spooky but I suppose that’s not extreme enough. I do like that it makes it very clear that no matter who they were in life, the dead are malevolent and they lie.

In addition to the good use of practical effects, the strong performance by lead actress Sophie Wilde helps the film punch above its weight. The script has some issues, such as not investing sufficiently in Mia’s relationship with her mother and her loneliness, that the actress manages to mostly gloss over. Overall it’s a solid horror film and a good debut showing by this duo of directors. But it’s still a fairly standard horror film and does nothing to rise above its genre.