Warning! This article contains major spoilers for Talk to Me. If you've yet to see the film, and don't want to know how it ends, turn back now!
Talk to Me has one of the best horror movie endings in recent years, so it's hardly surprising that cinemagoers have been gushing about it on social media since the film's release on July 28. Describing it as "satisfying" and "mean-ass", viewers are loving it's no-holds-barred, bleak finale – but co-writer Danny Philippou suggests there's not just one way to read it.
"I really wanted it to be open to interpretation," he tells 12DOVE. "There's so many parts to the ending, where we've just left nuggets and hints and things throughout.
"If you go and rewatch the film, and really analyze what's happening in every frame, there's things that are… there. I can't wait for someone to break it down and find every single piece and put the puzzle together. Everything has meaning."
Given Talk to Me's chilling prologue, which sees a young man fatally stab himself in the head to avoid being plagued by vengeful, violent spirits any longer, the way it ends seems inevitable in retrospect...
Directed by Phillipou – who penned the Aussie flick with Bill Hinzman – and his twin brother Michael Philippou, it follows 17-year-old Mia (Sophie Wilde), who's still coming to terms with her mother's sudden death two years earlier. In an attempt to distract herself from her grief, she persuades best friend Jade (Alexandra Jensen) to take her to a low-key party, where school-hotshots Joss (Chris Alosio) and Hayley (Zoe Terakes) are hosting another of their famous séances.
The youngsters, you see, are the owners of an embalmed hand which, according to them, allows whoever grabs hold of it to not only converse with the dead but offer up their body for a short-term possession. Unconvinced by its power, Mia signs herself up for a turn, and quickly gets hooked on the thrill of channeling spirits.
Addicted, the group start conjuring ghosties on a regular basis, but things take a terrible turn when Jade's younger brother Riley (Joe Bird) insists on having a go. While under the influence of a spirit, Riley starts talking to Mia as if he is her mother, Rhea, saying how much she misses her and how she'd never have knowingly abandoned her.
Desperate for more time with her late parent, Mia grabs the hand herself and tries to stop the gang from pulling Riley out after the agreed 60 seconds. When his possession runs longer than the maximum 90 seconds, Riley, having been taken over by spirits, starts smashing his head on nearby surfaces and gouging out his own eye. He is hospitalized, while Mia starts being haunted by visions of Rhea, who tries to convince Mia to kill Riley in order to end his suffering.
In news that's unlikely to shock anyone's who ever seen a horror movie before; turns out, Mia is not actually talking to her mother, but a malevolent entity who's keeping Riley's soul in Hell and wants to claim the boy forever. Mia tries linking a catatonic Riley to the hand again, convinced that Riley is trapped on the other side due to them not having blown out the candle that opened the gateway during his initial possession, but nothing shakes him out of his stupor.
Later, Mia's father, Max, confesses to her that Rhea took her own life and that he's kept her suicide note a secret even since he found her body, which prompts a confused Mia to lash out at her dad. Rhea's ghost tells Mia that Max is lying before she's attacked by an evil spirit posing as her pops. During the assault, Mia winds up stabbing her real father in the neck with scissors.
Manipulated by "Rhea", Mia returns to Riley's bedside and discovers the decaying spirit of an old man in his place. Desperate to save Riley, she wheels the spirit out of the hospital and to a nearby roadside, as "Rhea" continues to encourage Mia to kill Riley in order to "free him". As Jade spots Mia and runs towards her pal and her brother, Mia throws herself in front of the traffic.
She wakes up on the road, injured, and stumbles back into the hospital, where she sees a fully healed Riley embrace his sister and mother Sue (Miranda Otto). Mia also spots her father, seemingly okay despite his wound, walking away from her. Even though she calls out to them all, they can't seem to hear her. Slowly, the lights in the hospital corridors begin to shut off, guiding Mia down one specific pathway, which leads her to a table with a solitary candle. She sits down and extends her arm across the table, grabbing another that lurches forward from the shadows... With that, she learns that she's passed over and has been conjured by a group of men with another embalmed hand.
“[Mia dying] was always the ending we were going for; it's something I came up with on the very first script," Danny explains, when we ask whether the final moment came to him during the writing process, or whether it was there from the beginning. "Lots changed throughout the filmmaking process but that always remained the same."
Talk to Me is in UK and US cinemas now. For more, check out our longer chat with Danny and Michael Philippou or our guide to the most exciting upcoming horror movies heading our way.
