By MICHAEL GINGOLD
Believe the hype: The much-lauded TALK TO ME is indeed one of 2023’s standout horror films. Opening theatrically this Friday, July 28 from A24, following a raucously received screening this past Sunday at the Fantasia International Film Festival, it’s the feature directorial debut of Australian filmmaking twin brothers Danny and Michael Philippou, who discuss it with RUE MORGUE below.
Scripted by Danny Philippou and Bill Hinzman, from a concept by Daley Pearson, TALK TO ME is a youth-horror film with an uncommonly perceptive contemporary vibe. It truly captures the way modern youth live their lives on social media–not surprising, considering that the Philippous won their first fame via hugely popular and award-winning genre/comedy shorts on their RackaRacka YouTube channel. TALK TO ME, however, is deadly serious, telling of a group of friends who reach out to the spirit world via an embalmed severed hand. Inevitably, the spirit world reaches back, with deadly consequences that see the Philippous finding a number of new ways to frighten us; see our review here.
How did your experiences in both creating on-line content and the reactions to it influence the writing and making of TALK TO ME?
DANNY PHILIPPOU: We were able to really hone our craft in every single aspect doing the YouTube stuff, and even the videos we made before YouTube. We were handling so many of the creative aspects ourselves, like editing and trying to do the effects, which allowed us to learn. As our channel got bigger, and we were able to get funding for different things, we were able to slowly bring on different collaborators, and that helped strengthen us on all aspects. And as for the reactions, we wanted to capture this YouTube/TikTok generation of people who are recording these experiences for fun, or doing things as a cry for attention.
MICHAEL PHILIPPOU: It wasn’t necessarily the reactions to our own videos, but the whole on-line culture. Usually, you don’t do things that will affect you in a bad way, whereas now it’s like, do those things and film them! That’s the kind of thing that will get you noticed, and any attention is good attention. I think now, the line is kind of blurred between what’s good attention and bad attention; it’s just attention. It’s the same thing with the hand; these characters don’t fully understand what they’re messing with, or what they’re doing. Their perception is that it’s a good thing, and it’s just fun and games, but there’s another side to it that isn’t.
It’s interesting that we don’t learn too much about the hand’s origins; we don’t get the usual history of the cursed object.
DANNY: Well, we wrote a very extensive mythology bible where we broke down everything about the hand–every single ghost that is attracted to it in the film, its history and where it came from, what certain phrases mean. But we wanted the kids to be in over their heads. I sort of switch off at those moments in movies where the characters start to research and find the artists and so on. We wanted to capture the fact that these kids really do not know what they’re dealing with, and it’s hard for them to wrap their heads around. They’ve got rough rules that they think work for the hand, but are they the rules, or are they just their perception of the rules?
Whose hand did you use as the model for the one in the movie?
DANNY: We did so many passes, and it ended up being our production designer, Bethany Ryan. We originally had a man’s hand for it, but it just didn’t fit.
MICHAEL: I believe there were 18 different sculpts of the hand, figuring out which position was right, because originally it was going to be like this [clutches his hand tight], but that didn’t work. We went through so many iterations, but we finally got it in the end. It was a really tough process, and we were racing the clock; we got the final version of the hand in on the day we were shooting it. They were working on it relentlessly right up to the last second.
You’ve spoken about being influenced by South Korean genre cinema; were you also inspired by past Australian horror films?
MICHAEL: We were fortunate enough to be able to work on THE BABADOOK, just crewing. I was a production runner and Danny was…he was lighting, but his official title was “work experience.” And Jennifer Kent was the first director I saw who truly cared about what she was making. Every other production I’ve been on, everybody was there for a payday, but she cared about every frame and every shot. She had such a strong vision and no willingness to move from that, and I admired that about her. We adopted that kind of mentality: Just pursue your vision fully. We were going to do TALK TO ME with a big studio in America, the Hollywood way, but it didn’t feel right because we weren’t going to have creative control. So we decided to do it on a smaller scale, being able to retain that control. That’s something we learned by watching Jennifer work.
With the horror material, there are of course certain tropes in there, and we leaned into the Australian versions of those, like the kangaroo that’s injured on the side of the road. But as far as other specific films, not really, because I think internationally, people’s perception of Australia is the Outback, the desert, and for a lot of Australians, it isn’t like that at all. It’s like what you see in the movie, the suburban life, so we wanted to show a different side of our country.
You and your cast capture the suburban vibe very well; these feel like real kids, not movie kids. How did you achieve that in both the writing and the casting?
DANNY: The casting was a pivotal part of that. We had a lot of it on the page, but finding authentic actors who could bring themselves to the roles was important. And also the rehearsal process, finding the delivery of certain lines; if it wasn’t feeling natural coming out of their mouths, we would change it. It was just being open and collaborative with the performers who were embodying those roles. With most of the actors, once we found them, we knew we had found them. Once we saw Sophie Wilde, we were like, “That’s Mia.” Once we saw Zoe Terakes, we were like, “That’s Hayley.” There were a lot of them where it felt like they just fell into their roles.
When you were working with that studio, did you get any especially ridiculous notes about the movie?
DANNY: They really wanted to go into the exploration of the hand, and figuring out where it came from. They were pushing for the characters, toward the end of the second act, to discover everything about the hand, and I was like, “Oh, I don’t know if I want to do that; that just feels like every movie ever.” That was one of the notes that was sort of scaring us, and it felt like that could steer TALK TO ME toward not being unique.
The film has a great balance of psychological, slow-burn horror and blunt, visceral shocks. How did you approach that balance?
MICHAEL: As we were speaking before about Korean cinema, directors that we like such as Bong Joon-ho are able to merge genres so seamlessly within the same film. We’ve always respected that, and we wanted TALK TO ME to work as a horror film, but then also as a drama. Having characters you care about would add to the horror, so it was important to create something that worked in all those aspects, even comedy. Because in life, it’s not just one genre; it’s not horror all the time and you’re not happy all the time. It’s a rollercoaster of emotions, and that’s what we wanted to do with TALK TO ME: have a bit of everything in there.
Daley Pearson is credited with the concept for TALK TO ME, so can you talk about the origins and evolution of the film?
DANNY: Yeah, there were characters we had come up with for another project, like Mia and Jade and their friends, and I was really inspired by negative experiences my neighbor had had with drugs. Daley Pearson, who’s a producer on [the popular animated series] BLUEY, had a short film he sent to me, and it seemed to fit into that world so well, and was such a fun concept, that I did a pass on it, and then I couldn’t stop writing it. I got to about 80 pages, and then I gave it to Bill Hinzman, and we were able to form and fabricate the story.
TALK TO ME’s makeup effects are excellent.
DANNY: Yeah, Make-up Effects Group [headed by Paul Katte and Nick Nicolaou] are incredible, and they’re all super-collaborative. We’re pretty hands-on and specific, and our makeup bible was very extensive, but they were game, and they brought their A-game and were able to go with the flow of things. Like, there was a sequence we ended up having to remove from the film because we weren’t able to shoot it, but everything we asked for, they were able to accomplish. They were the best, and we can’t wait to work with them again.
MICHAEL: It was important to us to be able to do everything as practically as possible, and for it to look as visceral as possible. And also to be unique, so we really worked with them on that. Some of the makeup effects took a long time to do, but it was worth it. Even if they’re only on screen for a few frames, that’s the stuff that sticks with you. A lot of the makeup is not stuff we linger on, but it’s there and it sticks out. I’ve always respected films where it’s not like, “Look what we’ve done!” too much, and you can see the work that was put into it but it’s not overly shown off. We love Nick and Paul, and also Rebecca Buratto, our head of makeup, who we’ve worked with through our YouTube stuff. She helped us do blood rigs and all kinds of crazy stuff as we were developing our skills, so it was great to bring her on.
Can you talk about the scene you wanted to shoot but weren’t able to?
MICHAEL: There was going to be a transformation in the film, but we realized with the schedule, and then once we put the scene together in the edit, that we didn’t actually need it. It was so much more effective to rely on the pacing and editing and story as opposed to seeing it viscerally. It would have been cool, but it actually worked out so much better.
[SPOILER follows…]
I have to ask about the scene where the guy makes out with the dog; how did you get both the actor and the dog to do that?
DANNY: We built a dog’s head for him to interact with. He didn’t actually kiss the dog; it’s a mix of visual and practical effects.
MICHAEL: What he’s kissing is a dummy dog head with someone puppeteering the mouth, and then we had a plate of a dog licking food, and we merged the two together. So he didn’t have to kiss a real dog!
DANNY: He definitely wouldn’t have wanted to do that, and I don’t think it would have been legal as well…
MICHAEL: Maybe if they went on a few dates and got to know each other, they would have been able to do it!
