Moviegoers hungry for some new horror should get ready to “talk to the hand,” as it were, with the new A24-distributed Australian creepfest Talk to Me hitting theaters this week. From twin brothers and YouTube sensations Michael and Danny Philippou — known for their channel RackaRacka — Talk to Me takes viewers into the grips of terror as a group of South Australian teens get hooked on a very dangerous party game – contacting the dead and letting the restless spirits they encounter briefly possess them. You know, for fun!
For one teen, the already troubled Mia (Sophie Wilde), the experience proves a bit too addicting. A bit too comforting. And when things start spiraling for them all, she starts becoming unable to discern reality from the realm of the spirits, and worse, which side is telling her the truth.
Fandom spoke with Michael and Danny in order to dig into the nooks and crannies of this crazy new supernatural story, starting with how they came to cast Sophie Wilde as their lead, who delivers a crucial, star-making performance as Mia.
Leader of the Pact
Finding the perfect Mia may have taken a long while, but it was all totally worth it in the end, including losing some of the film’s budget because Sophie Wilde was not well known.
“Initially we were looking for a bigger-named actor to take that role,” Danny shared. “But once we saw her audition, we were just blown away. We knew straight away that we wanted her. We fought so hard to get her.”
The brothers and producers wanted Wilde in the film so fervently that they reinvested their fees back into the movie. As Danny explained, “We just believed in her so much and she was actually so incredible. There’s not a bad frame of her.”
Wilde’s performance is a truly special one, but her young co-stars are also terrific, coming off as so natural that they all feel like genuine friends. This was by design, of course, as there were crucial acting and bonding exercises before filming began.
Said Danny, “The rehearsal process wasn’t that long, but it was very pivotal to really break down every single beat and make the characters feel like the actors could embody them and change dialogue if we needed to change dialogue to make it more natural to them. They were even acting out scenes that weren’t in the movie but that just happened in their character’s history or their past… creating a world that just felt lived in.”
“We’d have them write out diary entries as their characters about where they were in their lives as the characters,” Michael added. “All little things like that. Just to bring life to the character.”
The brothers also, in the spirit of the film’s party games, had the cast engage in awkward social dares. As Danny recalled, “I remember two of the actors lost and then they had to fake a real fight in front of our producer, Sam [Jennings]. So it was all awkward things like that, or screwing up takes on purpose. It was so much fun.”
Shake On It
The cursed object centerpiece of the film is an embalmed hand and forearm that, when gripped, can open a limited portal to the afterlife, and then allow the participant to be taken over by a dead soul – all for the amusement of partygoers and their ever-recording smartphones. Notably, throughout the film, not much specific lore is revealed about the hand itself, keeping it mysterious and terrifying.
That being said, the brothers definitely had the mythos for the hand all mapped out in their heads, even if you don’t see it onscreen. “Our mythology Bible was so thick. We knew everything about the hand from start to finish,” Danny explained, with the brothers having mentioned at recent screenings that they do have an idea for what a sequel to the film could explore.
However, Talk to Me pointedly avoids the cliché scene where a wise (and likely older) character explains the exact history of the hand, and Danny noted, “There was a Hollywood studio that was originally going to make this film but their creative notes were wanting to delve into that side of the thing, where they’re exploring the hand and finding out the history of it. And I just found that less scary. It’s always that typical part of the film where you sort of get a little bored.”
“Yeah, like they go to the library and they dig stuff up in the archive, you know?” Michael added. “So instead, we have kids being over their heads and not really understanding what it was they’re messing with. They’ve got a bunch of rules that they’ve figured out, that they think are right, but they don’t really know what it is.”
“We plotted little seeds and there’s ways you can figure out how things are working,” Danny said, “but we didn’t want to spell it out for sure, no.”
Part of the idea for Talk to Me came from an executive producer on Bluey, Daley Pearson, of all people. It was Pearson who sent the twins a short film about kids having fun with possession. “It was sort of like a comedy, horror thing,” Danny said. “He sent me this and I was already writing another thing with characters that I was really attached to and so I sort of planted them into this thing and spun it from a comedy to more straight horror.”
Finding the exact look and pose for the hand was also a challenge in its own right. As Michael put it, “Originally it was upright. And we went through so many different molds, and they didn’t work for whatever reasons. Even different people’s molds… different hands, And then [you wonder], what’s the best one to grip onto? What’s the best one to perform with? That went through so many iterations. We really got there last minute.”
I Am No Man!
Talk to Me lead Sophie Wilde may not be a huge star (yet) but the film does boast a familiar face with Miranda Otto (Lord of the Rings, War of the Worlds), who plays Mia’s best friend’s mother, Sue, who has been kind enough to look after Mia in the aftermath of a tragedy.
Otto loved the script and quickly signed on to do the film, and Danny remarked, “Having her gave us the freedom to cast more unknowns, and everything like that, because we had a name. And yeah, we were so scared to direct Miranda Otto! I felt so intimidated by her.”
“Yes. Like, who are we to direct Miranda Otto?” Michael replied, with a laugh.
Danny described Otto as bringing, “such a warm, auntie-like presence on set. And she was so collaborative and wanted to be there. She was incredible.”
Michael noted this continued into the Sundance Film Festival, where the film debuted to a ton of positive buzz in January and quickly got snatched up for distribution by A24. “She came out to Sundance and then we were all just hanging out together and doing all the press junkets. She’s just so much fun and we loved hanging out with her. Shout out to Miranda!”
Talk to Me stands as a departure for Michael and Danny, and not just because it’s their first theatrical feature. Their YouTube channel, RackaRacka, became very popular for its horror comedy videos. And while there are moments of well done levity in Talk to Me, this is certainly not a comedic take on the material, playing things straight and suitably freaky.
“The stuff that we liked watching was very different to the stuff we were making on YouTube,” Michael noted, adding that making the movie, “was [us] leaning into that and the films that we respected and the type of cinema that we loved watching. That was the kind of stuff we wanted to make because we had made all the comedy-horror stuff before. We wanted to make something that showed a different side of us. And there are little hints to RackaRacka and the energy [is similar], and things like that. You can see that. But also, it was showing a new side of things for us that’s what we’re looking forward to exploring.”
Talk to Me opens July 28.
