It may already be scaring up a storm right now as the latest A24 horror success story, but Talk To Me could have been a whole lot nastier.
Talk To Me is a tale of a grieving teen and her friends playing a malevolent game with an embalmed hand that summons a terrifying supernatural force. It’s been doing very good numbers at the box office and currently has a Rotten Tomatoes score of 95%.
The film’s Australian twin directors Danny and Michael Philippou spoke to Deadline over Zoom about their grisly supernatural gem, the YouTube channel RackaRacka that helped steer them towards their directorial debut, and more.
During the conversation, they were asked how different the first draft of the script written by Danny and Bill Hinzman was from the finished article, especially given the film’s central ceramic hand wasn’t even part of the original plan.
Why Was The Original Version of Talk To Me More Extreme?
The responses revealed that the first iteration of the film would have been a more extreme affair. Danny noted the essence was there, but Michael then noted the major difference.
‘’It was a lot more cutthroat. It was a lot more violent,’’ Michael said in response. Danny then went into a bit more detail as to why they changed that. ‘’But through that process, [the goal was to] not let it feel exploitative and really find that line. Because we knew we didn’t want to make a splatter film; we didn’t want to make it too extreme, and the first draft was probably a bit more extreme.’’
Talk To Me is currently available to watch in cinemas.
