SPOILER WARNING: The following article contains major spoilers for the movie Talk To Me. If you have not yet seen the film, proceed at your own risk!
The horror genre is full of indelible iconography. Freddy Kreuger’s glove. The masks of Michael Myers, Jason Voorhees, and Ghostface. The Lament Configuration Box. The Babadook book. There is a long and robust history, and for Danny and Michael Philippou’s critically acclaimed Talk To Me, the chilling heart of everything is an embalmed hand. Encased in ceramic and covered with pen-written words, names and phrases, the mystical object has a spooky connection to the afterlife, and it offers both excitement and terror for anyone who uses it.
After seeing the exciting new A24 horror movie, we’re obsessed with the supernatural appendage, and we’ve put together this feature to dig into everything that we know about it and express that obsession. With both evidence delivered in the film and my interview with the twin brother directors, let’s dig into how the hand works, where it comes from, and what the Philippous know about it that we don’t.
How Does The Hand Work In Talk To Me?
In the movie, Hayley (Zoe Terakes) delivers rather clear exposition regarding how the hand works. When a user is prepped for the experience by being belted to a chair, a candle is lit. This, as is explained, opens the “door” to the next plane of existence – and it also serves as a beacon for the spirits of the dead (as evidenced by what happens at the end of Talk To Me).
Once the candle is lit, the user grips the hand as though for a handshake and says the key phrase: “Talk to me.” This allows said user to see the spirit that has been called to the light, and they appear as a living corpse. It’s typically a different spirt every time, but as I will get into later in this feature, it’s not random. If the user can get over the shock of seeing a dead person and remains engaged with the hand, they can proceed to the next step: saying, “I let you in.”
Saying this phrase allows the spirit to possess the user, and once this occurs, a responsible person in the room must start a stopwatch and keep an eye on it. The spirit may try and frighten and distract other people in the room, but it’s advised that nobody stay possessed for more than 90 seconds. If the connection between the user and the hand isn’t severed before then, there is a risk that the spirit won’t want to leave.
When the 90 seconds are up, the possessed person has to let go of the hand to cease the possession; this isn’t always easy and can require the help of others. When the user lets go of the hand and the candle is blown out (closing the “door”), the user returns to normal – often gleefully pumped full of adrenaline and dopamine.
How Does The Hand Get Passed Around?
The specifics of how the hand in Talk To Me gets passed around aren’t made clear in the film, but we can mostly surmise what happens based on the evidence presented. Prior to ending up in the possession of Joss (Chris Alosio) and Hayley, the hand was in the possession of Duckett (Sunny Johnson) – whose death we witness in the opening sequence. It was presumably from him that Joss and Hayley learned the rules and/or they were with him at a party where people were getting possessed. It feels fair to assume that this is generally how the hand is shared around… though we also can’t dismiss the idea that there are some supernatural forces at work that keep the thing moving from friend group to friend group.
The most significant piece of evidence pointing at the latter is the conclusion of Talk To Me. Mia (Sophie Wilde) basically steals the hand from Joss so that she can try and connect with her mother, but we never see what happens to it following her death. She doesn’t give it to anybody and explain how it works, so how does it end up in the hands of the Spanish-speaking partygoers we meet at the very end of the film? It’s not fully explained, but we can make educated guesses.
What Is The Hand And Where Did It Come From?
Some things about the hand in Talk To Me are made explicit, and some aren’t. The origins of the supernatural appendage belong in the second category. Those who get their hands on the hand get precise instructions about its usage, but its full history is an obscure mystery.
Case in point, when characters actually inquire about where the hand comes from, there are multiple answers. There is agreement that it is an embalmed hand that has been covered in ceramic, but there is controversy about who it originally belonged to. There is a story that it was once attached to a medium who could connect with the dead, and another that says it is the hand of a Satanist (and there other hand is out there somewhere). There is no sequence in the film where Mia and her friends do deep dive research into where the hand came from; it’s kept ambiguous.
Because the information about the hand’s origins aren’t offered in Talk To Me, movie-goers are left to come up with their own answers… but for what it’s worth, directors Danny and Michael Philippou worked absolutely everything out for themselves in the making of the film.
What The Filmmakers Worked Out About The Hand
In the making of their feature directorial debut, Danny and Michael Philippou took the canon of their creation very seriously, and they went above and beyond to understand the supernatural object at the center of the plot. When I interviewed the filmmakers prior to Talk To Me’s release, I asked about unanswered questions that they answered for themselves, and the brothers explained that they created a full mythology bible to add depth to their work.
Danny Philippou told me that he wanted to keep Mia and the other characters in the dark about the hand and avoid any kind of revelatory clichés, but they wanted to fully understand the thing for themselves:
Man, we've got the thickest mythology bible with the hand that breaks down every spirit they connected with, everyone that's ever had the hand, the history of it, where it came from. We've got everything. But we knew that we wanted the kids to be out of their depth, and we didn't want to have that whole expert scene where someone's explaining it or them like researching things on Google or going into the library. We wanted the kids to be completely out of their depth.
I followed up by asking if the Talk To Me bible was shared with the actors, and I got a fascinating response. Danny Philippou told me that Sophie Wilde was the only member of the principal cast who got to learn details and that those who learned most about the extracurricular material were the performers playing the “demons.” Also revealing a brilliant detail about how the hand works, the filmmaker said,
I think I shared some details with Sophie [Wilde] a little bit. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Little bits of pieces... And then also people that were playing the demons, I think that we told them about the histories of them, why they're connecting with these kids – 'cause each spirit is drawn to each different character's energy and their emotions and what they're going through mentally. So yeah, that's all in there as well.
With any luck, A24 and the Philippou brothers will eventually find some way to distribute the mythology bible (which matches my feelings regarding the two-and-a-half minute cut of the “glimpse into hell” sequence). Otherwise, it could be amazing to see the filmmakers further explore the depths of their creation and come up with something new and different as a Talk To Me 2.
For now, movie-goers and horror fans can exclusively enjoy Talk To Me on the big screen, with the film playing in theaters in wide release around the country. And if you’re looking for your next scary movie fix, head on over to our Upcoming Horror Movies guide.
