The film “Two, three, demon, come!” brothers Philip. Review

Horror “Two, three, demon, come!” (Talk To Me) is the directorial debut of fellow Australian brothers Danny and Michael Philippu, who previously became famous for their cinephile YouTube channel RackaRacka, which has nearly 6.8 million subscribers. With the help of the independent studio A24, the duo managed to make a successful transition from amateur exercises to professional cinema, and Julia Shagelman Looking forward to what they show next.

The film premiered in January of this year at Sundance, where A24 acquired the rights to distribute it, outbidding other distributors. Then he went to all the important shows of genre cinema, such as the Fantasia and South by Southwest festivals, which gave a start to the life of the previous hit of the studio “Everything everywhere and at once”. Having been released in the US at the end of July, “Two, Three, Demon, Come!”, Filmed with very modest funds, unexpectedly became a box office record holder, which was not prevented even by the neighborhood of such mega-bestsellers as Barbie and Oppenheimer. In its opening weekend, the film grossed $10 million, just short of the previous A24 record-breaking Ari Aster’s Reincarnations (2018) but surpassing Solstice (2019). Not surprisingly, the studio has already ordered a sequel to the brothers Philip, which should reveal the backstory of the sinister artifact from “… Demon, Come!” – a ceramic hand, with which you can establish contact with the afterlife.

At the same time, their film does not at all resemble the trendy “slow” or “sublime” horror that Astaire and other favorites of A24 shoot. The brothers don’t waste time gradually immersing the viewer into the atmosphere of a slowly approaching creeping horror, they return to their roots – tightly knit stories that can both entertain and scare, so that in one minute you giggle at a dumb joke (after all, the heroes of the picture are teenagers and the sense of humor of them slightly refined), and the next you freeze in your chair, without bringing another handful of popcorn to your mouth. On the one hand, it’s a respectful salute to eighties and nineties horror classics, from Poltergeist (1982) to Flatliners (1990). On the other hand, the authors feel confident in today’s reality, deftly integrating smartphones and social networks into the age-old story that, when starting a game with the otherworldly, one can dangerously play too much.

However, at the age of 15-17, death seems distant and unreal, something that can happen to others, but not to you. Therefore, high school students from the Australian suburbs turned it into a joke for parties. Gathering together, they take turns shaking the “dead man’s hand” (where it came from, no one really knows, and is not particularly interested), cast a spell, and for 90 seconds – timing is an important condition, which, of course, will be carelessly violated – they miss through themselves into our world the spirits of the deceased. All of this, of course, is filmed on phones and posted online, because for the zoomer generation, no experience is truly experienced unless it is captured on video, shown on the Internet, and authenticated by likes and comments.

For Mia (Sophie Wilde), unlike her peers, death is not an abstract concept or an occasion for fun. Two years ago, her mother (Alexandria Steffenson) died under strange circumstances, and since then the girl has fallen into a black hole of depression. This alienated her from her father (Marcus Johnson), who unsuccessfully tries to reach out to his daughter because of the wall built between them by grief, and made her an outcast among classmates who shy away from Mia like she was from the plague. From the acute feeling of abandonment, she escapes in the family of her friend Jade (Alexandra Jensen), becoming practically native to her mother (Miranda Otto) and younger brother (Joe Bird). As long as the experiment with the dead hand does not destroy these connections.

In the original, the film is called “Talk to me”, and these are the words that teenagers pronounce while shaking a terrible hand. Disunity, the lack of meaningful communication, the desire to make yourself heard in any way, to talk to you on an equal footing – the main motive of the picture, the reason that pushes its young heroes to actions that lead to the most terrible consequences. Exposing your fears and desires to the public or reaching out to the dead is a risk that, if something goes wrong, plunges you into even more loneliness.