This summer’s Talk to Me, the directorial debut of RackaRacka YouTubers Danny and Michael Philippou, was a grisly and gutsy revelation, a hugely profitable low-budget horror flick from Australia that keyed in beautifully on the modern teen experience and all the horror that entails. As we put it in our own glowing review at Paste, “Fierce, fun, and steeped in youthful energy, it’s a film that’s willing to go to some truly dark places in its exploration of grief, death and what it means when we reach too far into the beyond, but it’s also never afraid to laugh along the way. That juxtaposition alone is enough to make it one of the year’s must-see horror films, an addictive thrill ride that never loses its own playful spin on some classic horror ideas.”
And as anyone who has seen Talk to Me knows, the film wouldn’t be half as memorable without its important key prop: The severed, enameled hand! In the movie, the hand is like an urban legend artifact with an unknown history–it is implied to have passed from person to person, wrecking lives as it goes when teenagers (it’s always teens, somehow) disregard the rules of its safe use when speaking with the dead. Simply grasping the hand and speaking the words “talk to me” opens a bridge, allowing the hungry spirits from the other side to temporarily possess one’s body and communicate with the living.
So naturally, you’d want one of those hands in your own living room, right? Well, now you can do exactly that, as A24 has recognized the marketing cache of Talk to Me by creating an exact replica of the hand that is now available via the studio’s web store. It will set you back about $110, but that’s a small price to pay for one of the creepiest movie props seen in recent memory, one that also doubles as an incense holder, by the way. Or as A24 puts it:
“Light it up, let them in. Designed by our friends at Craighill, the life-sized ceramic Talk To Me Party Hand is the only smoking device (or incense burner!) that opens the door to the other side.”
Each ceramic hand apparently weighs three pounds, sitting at 8.5 inches high, and comes with a black microsuede cover. It also comes with the “party rules” of Talk to Me, which you can see below. The only downside? The product doesn’t ship until Nov. 30, 2023, which means you’ll have missed the window to break out the hand during this year’s 2023 Halloween party season–a real missed opportunity, if you ask us. Still, we look forward to hiding this thing around the house, perhaps slipping it under the covers with a loved one while they sleep. The possibilities are endless. May your own seances, meanwhile, work out a little bit better than they did for the characters of Talk to Me.
