Editor’s Note: The Stream does not recommend R-rated films. We do not recommend this one. However, the broader point Mark is making about natural law and purity and the dangers of the occult, especially in light of how much in our culture exalts the occult, is worth talking about. 

WARNING: There are SPOILERS AHEAD.

I am divided when it comes to horror movies. On the one hand most of them are cheap, exploitative garbage filled with sex, violence and gore. I would be irresponsible if I recommended these films to other fellow Christians, except in very rare instances.

But the best horror movies awaken their (likely unchurched) audiences about the reality of hell and the demonic, in a way that has startling power. Many are as powerful as the best sermons I’ve heard. As I once observed at The Stream. “What is the premise of almost every horror movie? Do Not Mess with the Natural Law.” Horror films often reinforce moral norms and warn against violating them. Greed, arrogance, denying God’s natural law and dabbling in the occult get punished, hellishly, right here on earth.

Frankenstein warns us not to play God and try and reverse the inevitability of death. The Exorcist teaches us to not mess with the occult, as the possessed child Regan had via Ouija Board. Even in slasher flicks like Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street, the kids who get knocked off in them are the usually ones who are drunk, promiscuous, or mean. Re-Animator and countless other films warn of the futile misery brought by attempts to defy our mortality.

Horror Films Don’t Make the Natural Law. They Just Enforce It.

This brings me to Talk to Me, a current R-rated horror movie that has gotten strong reviews and is doing well. The plot is the same as a large percentage of horror films: Fools who defy the natural law pay a dreadful price. Sophie Wilde is Mia, a young woman whose mother died after an overdose of pills which everyone has told her was accidental. Mia lives with her friend Jade (Alexandra Jensen), Jade’s kid brother Riley (Joe Bird), and Jade’s mother Sue (Miranda Otto, Eowyn from The Lord of the Rings). The acting is uniformly excellent.

Like a lot of kids in their teens and twenties, the Talk to Me kids are fascinated by creepy and weird stuff. The new craze is this: Someone has gotten hold of a hand which has been severed and ceramically encased. If you take hold of the hand and say, “Talk to me,” you’ll see a dead person. If you say “Come into me,” you will be possessed by the dead person … or something far worse. If you released the hand in under ninety seconds you can sever the connection and get away.

Of course, things go wrong. They always do when you dabble in the occult, even if you think you have a fail-safe. Mia keeps seeing her dead mother. Others suffer from nightmares, anxiety, depression. Young Riley, barely out of his teens, holds on to the hand for longer than ninety seconds. He gets possessed by a demon, who drives him to attempt suicide and drags his soul into Hell. 

Bright Red Warning Signs

The natural law was given to us by God and is pretty easy to explain. Respect your body and sex, and what they were designed for. Don’t try and talk to the dead. If someone produces a Ouija board or a chalky severed hand with weird markings all over it, run the other way.

I once had an editor try and assign me a story about fortune tellers and how accurate they are. It was that, he said, or a more dangerous idea about shark attacks. I gladly took the sharks. Even then, I knew that the occult is a portal to the demonic and you need to stay as far away from it as possible. Despite our secular culture, despite all the talk of a “post-Christian America,” our horror movies keep screaming this reality out loud and clear.

The Christian Character Who Repents

One character in Talk to Me who heeds this advice is Daniel. He is dating Jade, who assures her mother that he is “a serious Christian” who doesn’t drink, smoke, or have pre-marital sex. After one round with the creepy hand, Daniel repents and says, “Never again!” As others without his faith meet their terrible ends, he survives.

Daniel could even be considered a male version of the stock horror movie character, “the final girl.” In many of these films, kids who are mean, promiscuous, on drugs or otherwise sinful get dispatched by the killer or the demon. By the end there is only left “the final girl,” who manages to survive due to her innocence or virtue. (Laurie Strode in Halloween is an example.)

Whether consciously or not, Hollywood is sending the audience signals about the power of purity. I don’t want to oversell Daniel, who is a minor character, but for Talk to Me have him survive, as well as treating his faith with respect and not mockery, is a Hollywood miracle.

Mark Judge is a writer and filmmaker in Washington, D.C. His new book is The Devil’s Triangle: Mark Judge vs the New American Stasi.