For some reason, a Childersburg Alabama rescue squad member told a local TV affiliate in BFE, Alabama that a “TikTok Challenge” involving teens leaping off the back of speeding motorboats has killed four kids this year and that this was another example of social media and the Chinese-owned TikTok being bad for kids.

The story blew up and became national news. It was a lie, just another yahoo named Dennis making something up to fit an agenda.

But we believed it because it seems like every week, there’s a new viral example of something reckless young people are doing just to get “likes” on a video they post online. All a consequence of a performative generation trying to get noticed via online “attention culture.”

So the idea that teenagers might find this ceramic hand that serves as a portal for connecting with the gruesome, ghostly dead, use it as a party game, peer-pressure each other to try it and post videos of each other getting possessed and lashing out embarassingly or violently? Aside from the supernatural element, that’s an easy sell.

“Talk to Me” is an Australian horror film that taps into teen groupthink, gullibility and peer pressure with a jolting tale of this demon “hand” and how it keeps getting passed around for kicks and page-views despite its obvious dangers.

The drug-like rush of the experience and the social pressure to laugh off the dangers outweighs the eyes-averting gore of some of the consequences — captured on cell videos.

Maybe your teenagers wouldn’t fall for that. But by and large, most of us see that as just the sort of thing — like summoning Bloody Mary or The Slender Man — that no-consequences-considered kids would do.

The Danny Philippou/Michael Philippou film opens with a huge party that ends with a stabbing and a suicide, all of it captured on cell video because that’s what people do rather than “REACT” to something horrific happening in front of them.

The hand doesn’t show up until another party. That’s where Mia (Sophie Wilde), her bestie Jade (Alexandra Jensen), Jade’s “Christian” beau Danuel (Otis Dhanji) and Jade’s impressionable tween brother Riley (Joe Bird) show up for a little teen drinking, a lot of peer pressure and this experience that irresponsible Joss (Chris Olosio) and cruelly unpleasant Haley (Zoe Terakes) have to offer.

The hand has a few back-stories — legends — surrounding it, lore than nobody tries to confirm. It is covered in graffiti — names, cryptic words and the like. You light a candle, sit down with it and give the hand a shake while saying “Talk to me” and you see ghosts — decaying, angry, traumatized monsters that must have been people at some point or other.

Say “I let you in” and the demonic ghost takes possession of your body. The “rules?” Better not let it linger there for more than 90 seconds. Yank the hand away and blow out the candle to “close the door.”

Mia has a hint of the risk-taker about her. She doesn’t need the crowd’s “Do IT DO IT DO IT” egging on to shake hands with the afterlife.

But Mia’s recently lost her mother to tragedy. Mia is vulnerable. A glimpse of her dead mom is all it takes to make her eager to repeat the experience, heedless to the danger to her and it turns out, others.

As our parents always told us, it’s all in good fun until somebody gets hurt.

“Talk to Me” grimly marches through the consequences of taking a handshake from the dark side. Mia soon sees her mother and other ghosts without the helping hand. Someone gets hurt and Mia’s history of risks — “Are you on something?” Jade’s mother (“Lord of the Rings” veteran Miranda Otto) wants to know. — and reluctance to finish off an injured and dying kangaroo, to “put it out of its misery” — foreshadow what’s to come.

Otto lends the picture gravitas as the literal Adult in the Room — a single mom who embraces Mia, hinting at her history, until she recognizes her as a threat to her children.

Oz TV vet Terakes makes her cruel, callous mean girl a hateful figure, egging on others, eagerly documenting their horror and embarrassment.

Wilde (“The Portable Door”) gives us a relatable, (somewhat) innocent beauty right up to Mia’s first possession. It isn’t just makeup, editing, sound effects and huge, inky-black contact lenses that sell her “possession.” This is good horror film acting, taking us from the nervous laughter of the peer-presseured to the manic, willful violence of “another” taking over your body.

The movie itself a bit of a slog, leaning into the dread and falling on the unpleasant end of the horror film spectrum. The tone is somber, the laughs are darker than dark, the violence sudden and shocking and the cruelty self-centered, narcissistic and oh-so-high-school.

“Talk to Me” feels much longer than the 96 minute run-time, and that’s not just because of pacing problems that permeate the middle acts. It can be a bit of a drag. But when your movie sets out to dare viewers to not avert their eyes, that’s part of the hard-to-sit-through bargain.

But kudos to all involved for making a horror movie with a simple gimmick, a lot of gore and a few things to say about teen culture in a social media age, none of them having anything to do with TikTok.

Rating: R for strong/bloody violent content, some sexual material and profanity

Cast: Sophie Wilde, Joe Bird, Alexandra Jensen, Zoe Terakes, Chris Olosio, Marcus Johnson and Miranda Otto

Credits: Directed by Danny Philippou and Michael Philippou, scripted by Bill Hinzman, Daley Pearson and Danny Philippou. An A24 release.

Running time: 1:34