- A24's new horror film "Talk to Me" features a disturbing possession that's the stuff of nightmares.
- Ahead of the film's theatrical release, Insider spoke to directors Danny and Michael Philippou about the grisly scene.
The sharp crack of cartilage and bone against solid wood stunned the movie theater into absolute silence.
It was March 2023, and I was attending a late-night screening of A24's latest horror film "Talk to Me" at the South by Southwest Film Festival in Austin, Texas. On the screen, a young boy named Riley (Joe Bird) thrashed in the throes of a demonic possession, repeatedly banging his face against a wooden table in front of him, while a crowd of friends watched him frozen in horror.
Overcome by the evil spirit possessing him, Riley continued smashing his face into a pulp, and at one point, dug his fingers into his eye socket in a deranged attempt to pluck out his own eyeball. The only reason he survives the possession is because his sister Jade (Alexandra Jensen) wedges her hand between his head and the wooden table, saving Riley from death but not from serious injury.
The scene is the turning point of the thrilling new movie, which centers on a troubled 17-year-old girl named Mia (Sophie Wilde) and the dangerous dalliances she and her friends have with a cursed, mummified hand, and it stuck with me long after I left the theater. As a horror fan, I'm used to watching unsettling, violent, and downright disturbing moments play out on film, but something about this scene in "Talk to Me" (directed by brothers Danny and Michael Philippou) haunted me for the rest of the night — so much so that I actually slept with the lights on in my hotel room that night.
Possession films are a cornerstone of the horror genre. But in the Philippou brothers' exceptional feature debut, grief and yearning add nuance to a tightly-wound narrative that's anything but familiar. Ahead of the theatrical release of "Talk to Me," I sat down with Danny and Michael to discuss the intricacies of Riley's terrifying possession — and how Mortal Kombat, of all things, helped prepare them for the gruesome, chilling scene.
The posession scene was even more intense at first
In the first draft of the script, Danny and Michael explained, the scene where Riley takes the cursed hand and becomes possessed went "way further."
"When we were on set and we were blocking through it, it went for longer as well," Michael said. "But it was actually a constant debate, because we just didn't wanna be gratuitous. We wanted that moment to carry impact, and for the right amount of time."
The scene undeniably carries impact: As Riley becomes more entrenched in the throes of his possession, he continues to self-harm to a terrifying extent, stopping just short of smashing open his skull on the table. The previous version of the script saw Riley "get dragged elsewhere and then continue" harming himself, Michael said.
"There was like a corner of a bookshelf that he was gonna start headbutting as well," Danny added.
While the version of Riley's possession featured in the film is bloody and horrifying, the scene was still informed by the realistic limits of the human body, including how long Riley would be able to continually injure himself before passing out.
"Once we were all on set, we were sort of seeing how fucked up he was getting. We saw how he was breaking down. We're like, 'Okay, for it to continue is just ridiculous.' It just felt too unrealistic," Danny said.
There was also the question of how the characters would react to a particularly violent possession — which was a concern with main character Mia's first possession in a previous version of the script.
"A big thing in the script was that the first possession with Mia went further, and there were some really extreme things that happened in that," Danny explained. "But it just sort of took away from the weight of that second possession with Riley and made it less realistic that the kids would go back and keep doing it."
The gory scene used practical effects
Once they'd figured out how they wanted the scene to escalate, the next challenge for the filmmakers was making the gore look as realistic as possible — especially when it came to the moment where Riley nearly plucks out his own eye.
"VFX always doesn't work on the eyes. Like people trying to push into places on their face, it's never worked. So I knew that I wanted to do it practically," Danny said.
The directors ended up building a prosthetic face over actor Joe Bird's real face, to allow him to fully dig around in the prosthetic orbital socket.
"On a certain angle, you couldn't tell that it was an extra part of his face. So he was actually reaching and pulling an eyeball — a fake eye — out of a practical head," Danny said.
The brothers also wanted to make sure that all actors, especially young stars like Bird, felt at ease while filming the violent scenes on set.
"It was just getting him comfortable... starting slow and increasing momentum and making it comfortable for him each step of the way," Michael told Insider. "He was so game. Even when he first came on set and he started doing it, it looks so frightening, but to him, it was having a laugh."
But above all, the Philippous are consummate filmmakers with a dedication to their vision. Michael revealed that he had the entirety of the final cut re-exported just to make Riley's first headbutt match up with the rhythm he had in his head — a difference of seconds, but an important one to the directors regardless.
"I made them re-export the whole film with it just three frames longer," he said. "I could feel it in my head how long it needs to be before the crack."
The brothers' experience as YouTubers helped them execute their vision
The pipeline from hit YouTube personalities to feature filmmakers might not be the most common (although it seems like it's becoming a bit of a trend for A24 at least). But for Danny and Michael, their work for the platform greatly helped their process. (The brothers' channel RackaRacka has over six million subscribers at the time of this article.)
"Certain things that we did, a bunch of different things that we tried — it's stuff that we learned through YouTube," Michael told Insider. And Danny, amused by my interest in the gore-filled scene, encouraged me to watch their video recreating Mortal Kombat fatalities in real life.
That particular video, like most of the brothers' other past clips, features absurd stunts and lots of gore — and it's not hard to see how they could translate the well-timed visual gags of their YouTube shorts into a tightly-plotted feature. Riley's grisly possession scene is a prime example of how the brothers have honed their craft to a new point without forgetting their roots.
As Michael told me with a laugh: "You look at our YouTube background, we could have made that scene go for an hour if we wanted to."
"Talk to Me" is in theaters now.