They Talk is something of a challenge if pacing and continuity are factors you hold dear, but if you’re a bit bendy and are up for sacrificing the flawless flow of a perfectly blended plot for a job well done on pretty much everything else, then you’ll sit through this quite happily.

A youthful group of documentary makers are rather clumsily filming in fictional Twin Lakes (shout out to the Twin Peaks collective out there; the allusion is unmissable), where a plethora of dead bodies turning up at the town’s dam over the years has led to rumours of an alleged curse.

Sound engineer Alex (Jonathan Tufvesson) is therefore somewhat unsettled when he discovers crackly and sinister-sounding voices he’s inadvertently recorded, becoming more so when they begin referring to him by name (EEEK! Can you imagine???  I wouldn’t be in his shoes if you paid me; I’ll watch from over here, thanks.)

Alex’s unease deepens with the sudden return of long-lost childhood friend Amanda. It soon becomes clear there’s some diabolical secret between the pair as the voices grow ever more insistent, suggesting their intent may actually be to warn him of impending peril. But just how terrible is this secret? And does it have anything to do with the unearthly voices, or is there something far worse at work?

Directed by Giorgio Bruno from a screenplay co-written by Vinicio Canton and Stefano Ceccarelli, They Talk was filmed in Calabria, Italy (over the span of just one month, if Google is correct; impressive indeed for a low-budget production of this quality). The filmmakers suck the brooding essence out of the location’s dramatic landscape, perfectly setting a pervasive, relentless tone of bleakness, foreboding, and tightly-wound tension. They also have the atmospherics totally nailed with the score, but the synth theme of the soundtrack itself just didn’t sit right with me.

It’s slightly unfortunate that this is rather typical of the nature of the film throughout; the director and writers clearly show immense passion for their work, but you can barely move for potentially intriguing little subplots; as if each of the creators had their own individual creative outpouring but didn’t quite manage an amalgamation.

The result is that in its entirety the whole thing comes across as rather disjointed and very hard to follow. Genuinely terrifying flashbacks and repeated jumping from this character to the next mean the original plot is lost, and with it the the main source of explanation for all that follows. This is a shame, because on all other aspects it really hits the high notes; at no point is the easy route taken. Even the cast consists of a multi-lingual mix, though this does lend a rather odd quality to the dialogue that’s suggestive of dubbing, in spite of it being spoken in English.

Despite the fractured storyline, They Talk had me creeped-out and captured from the beginning, and to hell with whether I could follow every step. I got the general idea of the story; with the admirable level of dedication given to almost everything else, the finer plot points were of little consequence. Remember folks, it’s not always about the destination; half of the fun is the journey.

7.5 out of 10 Creepy Question Marks