SPOILER WARNING: The following article contains major spoilers for Talk To Me. If you have not yet seen the film, proceed at your own risk!
Talk To Me is a film that is filled with moments that both make you jump and get under your skin, but I don’t think I’m being hyperbolic when I say that there is one sequence that stands above all others in the horror department. I am, of course, referring to Mia’s glimpse into hell – where she witnesses the unspeakable torture that the soul of her best friend’s brother is undergoing while his body is unconscious in a hospital bed. Watching the scene, you don’t see too much, but little you do see is more than enough to conjure nightmares… and knowing this makes it all the more mind-blowing that the original plan for the sequence was much, much more intense.
I interviewed first-time directors Danny and Michael Philippou early this month during the virtual press junket for Talk To Me, and I veered the conversation into spoiler territory to discuss the aforementioned scene. I asked about how it came together and how the material was handled during post-production, and Michael laughed while explaining that the terrifying glimpse into hell originally “went for a lot longer.” Picking up the baton, Danny got more specific, saying,
It went for two minutes 30 [seconds]... We wouldn't have gotten away with the rating that we had. And tonally, it felt like a different film. It was just too full on. So we ended up cutting it right back and having little glimpses, and that was like scenes that our producer was like, 'You'll never get this past the censors.' And we did! We snuck it in little flashes, little frames.
If you’re watching Talk To Me on the big screen, the brain can’t fully process everything that the sequence in question is unloading into your eyeballs, but you certainly do get more than enough to understand both Mia’s escalating guilt and what’s at stake if she is unable to fix things. Narratively and emotionally, the movie doesn’t need more than what’s featured, and it sounds like cutting the gratuitous material was done for the betterment of the film.
As a horror fan, however, I still have to wonder two things: precisely what kind of nightmares are there to find spliced into the sequence, and what is it like to sit through the 150 second version? Those are two questions that the home video market can potentially answer. In regards to the former, being able to pause the movie when it becomes available on digital and Blu-ray will surely be eye opening; in regards to the latter, we can keep our fingers crossed that the full sequence will be made available as part of the Talk To Me special features. Danny Philippou isn’t promising anything, as he told me,
Maybe one day we'll release the full thing. But it was super, super, super messed up.
For now, Talk To Me is a terrifying enough experience to have in a movie theater surrounded by shocked horror fans. Featuring a cast including Sophie Wilde, Joe Bird, Alexandra Jensen Otis Dhanji, and Miranda Otto, the film is now playing in theaters everywhere and, thanks to terrific word of mouth and A24’s excellent reputation when it comes to horror, it just had a terrific opening weekend at the box office.
