Talk to Me, A24's new horror hit, revolves around a hand. A real creepy-looking embalmed hand, cut off at the wrist, with scribbles all over it, which allows its owners to bridge the gap between the living and the dead. According to co-writer Danny Philippou, though, the film's original script didn't feature any such hand at all.
Directed by Philippou and his twin brother Michael Philippou, the Aussie chiller centers on Mia (Sophie Wilde), a young woman who's still struggling to come to terms with the sudden death of her mother two years earlier. In an attempt to distract herself from her grief, she drags her best pal Jade (Alexandra Jensen) to a party, where fellow students, Joss and Hayley, are hosting another of their renowned séances.
"There was actually no hand initially until, like, the second draft. We found it in the second draft of the movie and all that sort of stuff. There was this footage that I saw of this neighbor of mine that I watched for a while, and he was experimenting with drugs for the first time," Philippou, who started making content on YouTube through the twins' popular RackaRacka channel, tells GamesRadar+. "He was on the floor having a really negative reaction to what he was taking, and all his friends that were with him weren't helping him though, they were filming him and laughing at him. That was a really big inspiration point."
You see, Joss and Hayley's basement get-togethers are the talk of the school, thanks to those willing to be possessed – you hold the hand, they light a candle, you say 'talk to me', and let whatever spirit appears in front of you into your body for 90 seconds – and their social media-obsessed guests. Doubting the viral videos' credibility, however, Mia signs up to take a turn, but things start to go wrong when malevolent spirits start latching on to the youngsters and terrorizing them in the real world.
"I got sent a short film by a producer named Daley Pearson, which was about kids having fun with possession," Philippou continues, when we ask about his inspiration. "I did a pass on that. I changed the tone, made it a bit more serious. I set up a few characters I was connecting with, like Jade, Mia, and Riley, and then once I started writing, I couldn't stop. Within six or eight days or something like that, I had eight pages and I sent that off to my co-writer, Bill Hinzman.
"He did a pass, then we just started passing it back and forth. It changed a lot throughout that process," concluded Philippou. "It was constantly evolving."
Talk to Me releases in UK and US cinemas on July 28. For more, check out our list of the most exciting upcoming horror movies heading our way.
