Demonic possession is the latest viral craze sweeping the Adelaide suburbs in new horror flick Talk to Me. Local teenagers are going to possession parties where holding a severed, embalmed hand gives them a 90-second thrill – until one unlucky customer holds on too long, and the spirits refuse to let go.

This handy hook makes for a fun and freaky first half, pitched somewhere between Drag Me to Hell and The Monkey’s Paw. First-time directors Danny and Michael Philippou draw on their experience as YouTubers and special effects demons to make the house-party happenings feel uncomfortably current – especially as the characters film the limb-inal freakouts for social media.

But after tiring of hand stuff, the movie loses its grip on narrative and descends into generic trauma porn. It follows the fashionable horror formula (act of mutilation, depressing aftermath, random ending) already played to diminishing returns in Hereditary, Midsommar and Smile.

Like those films it suffers from unlikeable characters and a lack of basic logic, with protagonist Mia (Sophie Wilde) making a series of baffling choices; from commemorating the anniversary of her mother’s suicide with a Demonic Possession party, to letting her best friend’s underage brother (Joe Bird) have a go at being momentarily inhabited by evil spirits.

In fact no one acknowledges the severity of the severed hand, which the cops don’t even take as evidence when a kid ends up in hospital. It is grim and gory, but in a depressing A24 sense rather than an interesting The Innocents way. The characters are underwritten and the ideas unexplored, lumbering talented young actors with lines like: “What if his spirit is disconnected from his body or something?”

Talk to Me works when nailing its digit-al premise, propelled by cracking performances from Bird, Wilde and Miranda Otto, guttural sound design and unshakeable technique from the Philippou brothers; the most Twisted Twins since the Twisted Twins. But as storytellers, these auspicious Aussies still need a hand.