Unlike the “movie brats” of the 1970s or video store savant Quentin Tarantino in the 1990s, the Australian directors of this summer’s must-see horror film Talk to Me honed their chops in quintessential digital fashion: by uploading videos to the gladiatorial arena of YouTube.
Danny and Michael Philippou, 30, weren’t your average YouTubers, however. Under the banner RackaRacka, the Adelaide brothers won millions of subscribers with expertly crafted, funny take-offs of genre movies and WrestleMania-style mayhem, including a series of “versus” videos pitting entire franchises against each other (eg Harry Potter vs Star Wars). Some videos seemed premised on a mix of back-porch dares and technical challenges: can you drive a car that’s filled to the roof with water?
But watch for a few minutes and it’s clear that the Philippous knew how to stage, shoot and edit action and comedy material professionally, with on-point sound effects and snappy visuals. Even when the assembled cast seems to be Michael, some friends and their little brothers or sisters in a suburban living room, the videos are compulsively watchable — the product of remarkably self-taught creators.
“We’re in Adelaide, South Australia, and there’s not much of a film scene here,” Danny says over Zoom. “So we were just constantly making stuff and developing our own style.”
Now the brothers have made their first feature, and the industry has been quick to take notice. The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year and sparked a bidding war; it was finally acquired by tastemaker distributor A24 for a seven-figure sum. Talk to Me is a horror thriller with an irresistible hook: a bunch of teens in an Australian suburb get their kicks by getting possessed by anonymous dead people, simply by gripping a mysterious hand sculpture. The Philippous’ command of the material exhibits a freshness lacking from a lot of studio-produced horror.
For all their showmanship, however, there’s a down-to-earth directness about the Philippous, twins who alternate seamlessly as they talk like practised radio hosts. The joy of making movies since they were kids still feels very present.
One formative influence was RL Stine’s series of Goosebumps books, which their mother adapted with her own drawings. “I remember being so excited to go to sleep and wake up and see what mum had drawn,” Danny says. “I think we got a lot of that creative side from her.”
While their parents worked, Danny and Michael were often left in the care of their grandfather. From the age of nine they would borrow their dad’s camera and make videos for their best friend’s sister, Nelly, an enthusiastic consumer of their efforts. One of the key relationships in Talk to Me is partly based on that bond, Danny says.
Citing influences ranging from Xena: Warrior Princess to The Sopranos, he remembers how, as teens, they made a whole “TV show” just for Nelly — 10 seasons, 80 episodes — plus six movies. This was the forerunner of their prodigious YouTube output, with some of the content fuelled by their rambunctious behaviour.
“We just went wild. We were delinquents,” Danny says, recalling their earliest efforts. “We haven’t transferred some of the old tapes yet because I don’t know what’s on them — you know, property damage,” Michael adds.
They launched RackaRacka on YouTube in 2013, at first just for fun. To cover living expenses, Danny would participate in medical trials and Michael would take off-the-books construction gigs and later stunt work. Eventually they monetised RackaRacka with ads. After the first year they hired a manager, and by the second they were supporting themselves financially.
As RackaRacka progressed through the 2010s, they took on crew members, but the brothers tackled all aspects of moviemaking themselves. “Usually I would write the thing, I’d shoot it and Michael would be in front of the camera. I would do a rough cut, he would do a fine cut. He’d do sound effects and music, I’d do colour grading and VFX,” Danny says, noting that the same applied to Talk to Me. “We sort of led those departments with the film too.”
The brothers had considered making a feature film before, but the turning point came in 2019 when YouTube demonetised the RackaRacka channel (possibly because of the violence and strong language). The brothers also wanted to move beyond the platform’s instant-gratification format.
They brought ideas to the Australian production company Causeway Films, producer of 2014 horror hit The Babadook, on which the Philippous had worked as production runner and lighting assistant. Talk to Me, which Danny co-scripted with his writing partner Bill Hinzman, stood out to Causeway. Despite studio interest, they opted for independent financing to ensure greater creative control.
The work ethic learned through RackaRacka served the Philippous well while filming. Constrained by a shooting schedule that tightened from eight to five weeks and sticking to their budget (“less than $4.5mn”), they applied their knack for editing at night right after shooting all day. They would even “edit in our minds while we’re shooting”.
Despite what one might surmise from the brothers’ raucous YouTube origins, Talk to Me has a keenly felt emotional core: Mia (rising star Sophie Wilde) fixates on reaching her deceased mother, risking her own life and those of others in the process. And while social media is part of the teens’ lives, the film’s drama lies in the bonds between them rather than some viral-video plot device. The ending too is a departure from the norm.
“At one point, when there was a studio that was going to make the film, their notes were coming in, and I was just like: OK, I know all these beats. And every time I see this in a movie, I switch off,” Danny says.
The Philippous’ success is still fresh, but they have been enjoying something of a victory tour since Sundance, with Steven Spielberg, Jordan Peele, Stephen King and Ari Aster all contacting them personally with positive comments on the film.
Next up will be finalising another horror script called Bring Her Back, with shooting planned for early next year, plus a documentary and developing a new film based on the classic video game Streetfighter, with a bigger budget.
Do they ever sleep? “I have such a weird energy that I have to rock myself to sleep,” Danny says. “ADHD kind of lends itself to that,” chimes in Michael. “I got two hours of sleep last night.”
Far from resting on their laurels, it seems the Philippous will continue to sacrifice sleep in order to give us all nightmares.
In UK and US cinemas from July 28
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