RackaRacka: From ‘inappropriate’ YouTube content to shooting a horror film
Adelaide twin brothers Danny and Michael Philippou were making upwards of $10,000 in ad revenue from a single video before YouTube changed the rules. So instead they turned to film.
Danny and Michael Philippou, the twin brother directors from Adelaide, are experiencing “severe anxiety.” When Review speaks with them over Zoom from their hotel room after an appearance at ComicCon, it is the eve before their debut film, Talk To Me, will be released worldwide. “I’d like to go to sleep and wake up when it’s been out for 10 days,” Danny says.
The 30-year-old brothers are the Sundance Film Festival success story nobody saw coming. They have been famous in certain corners of the internet for going on a decade, having built a loyal following of almost 7 million on their YouTube channel “RackaRacka” — an homage to their Adelaide hometown Pooraka — through their viral, violent parody videos.
The “RackaRacka” oeuvre is a heady mixture of lowbrow bro humour and high-production values. Think wackadoo pranks, pop culture-skewering skits like “Harry Potter VS Star Wars” (36 million views), and cartoonish wrestling matches. Titles include: “Ronald McDonald Chicken Store Massacre” and “Teaching Kids How To Fight”. Their stunts have landed them in legal hot water: in 2019, Michael wound up in court, facing several charges for filling up a car with water and driving it to a bottle shop during a heatwave for a skit titled “Scuba Driving”.
For a while, YouTube was a good wicket. The pair were earning upwards of $10,000 in ad revenue from a single video before sweeping changes to YouTube’s content rules began removing videos flagged as “inappropriate” from the pool of content on the platform that can be advertised upon. No matter, they took what they learned from making YouTube videos and transplanted it on to a film set.
RackaRacka’s chaotic YouTube skits are a far cry from the filmmaking fare one might typically associate with the auteur-driven cinema of Sundance. Yet Talk to Me, the highest-rated horror film of the year, was the festival’s unequivocal breakout.
Talk To Me debuted as the closing film of the Adelaide Film Festival on Halloween night in 2022 before making its way to South by Southwest. The brothers submitted it to Sundance on a whim, with no expectation that it would be accepted. But it was. The film screened to a packed Egyptian Theatre as part of Sundance’s notorious Midnight series, a program that is fertile ground for all things blood and guts and has birthed cult classics such as The Blair Witch Project and Saw – thus launching the career of fellow Australian horror maestro James Wan.
Ari Aster, the auteur of modern horror, was in the crowd. “We were just completely overwhelmed,” Danny says.
It is a terrifying, creepy, sophisticated film, with violence done so masterfully and explicitly – think crunching skulls and gouged eyeballs – that it is at times almost impossible to watch. The supernatural thriller revolves around an embalmed ceramic hand that, if held while uttering the phrase “talk to me,” has the power to conjure the dead. This doorway to the spirit world has somehow wound up at house parties in suburban Adelaide, where teenagers meddle with it with glee and share the sick footage on social media.
The idea came from Daley Pearson, the producer behind the hit children’s show Bluey, whom the brothers met at an awards show in 2017. “He [Pearson] is just hilarious. He is one of those people you meet that you feel like you’ve known your whole life,” says Danny.
Though the film had no bankable stars, it sparked a bidding war. The brothers fielded offers from behemoths such as Universal, Sony, Searchlight, and Neon. Ultimately, they went with A24, the hottest independent studio in Hollywood which this year nabbed 18 Oscar nominations, with their hit Everything Everywhere All At Once becoming the most decorated of the ceremony. A24’s offer was not the biggest – Talk To Me sold for a reported “high seven-figures” sum – but Danny says that “getting picked up by them was the ultimate dream”.
The boys were together with cast members Sophie Wilde, Miranda Otto, Zoe Terakes, and Chris Olosio, and a bunch of the film’s crew, including producer Samantha Jennings of Causeway Films, when they found out the film had been picked up. “Sharing that moment with a bunch of Australians in the middle of a snowstorm in Utah was so special,” says Danny.
“Having all the odds against you and it working out and getting to share that with everyone, it makes me emotional to think about,” adds Michael.
A big studio, which the brothers did not name, was initially in talks to make the film, but the brothers jumped ship as soon as they felt they were losing creative control. “They started giving us creative notes which we were worried about,” says Danny. “We weren’t going to have final cut, and we weren’t going to be allowed to shoot with Australian accents because it doesn’t translate well in America. So we were like ‘We’re outta here, we’re going to go back to Australia with Sam [Jennings] and try and do it independently’.”
They met Jennings and Kristina Keyton, the production duo behind Causeway Films while working as a lighting assistant and a runner on Jennifer Kent’s decorated suburban chiller, The Babadook. They credit Jennings with guiding them through the process of making their first feature. “She protected us and backed us on everything. She always put the creative first and was transparent with everything,” says Danny.
Jennings kept in touch with the brothers, later mentoring them at a Screen Australia workshop tutoring YouTubers wanting to develop films and series pilots. “They had really smart ideas. I saw how in touch they were and how much they were filmmakers and had always wanted to be filmmakers,” she tells Review.
“They wanted to make a smart, allegorical film. We loved their idea that if you have unresolved emotional stuff, that can spiral into something dark. It felt like it spoke to what a lot of young people are going through at the moment.”
Though Causeway Films is yet to celebrate its 10th birthday, it has consistently punched above its weight, producing films locally and internationally that have earned accolades at A-list festivals worldwide, like Jennifer Kent’s Nightingale (Venice 2018), Yolanda Ramke and Ben Howling’s Cargo (Tribeca 2018), Goran Stovleski’s You Won’t Be Alone (Sundance 2020), and Del Kathryn Barton’s Blaze (Tribeca 2022). The company’s debut, The Babadook, scooped up more than 50 festival and critic’s awards.
Talk To Me was a four-year labour of love, with a long casting process. “We found some actors that we thought were fantastic, but that took a blow to the budget because they weren’t big names, but we really wanted that discovery and authenticity. We really wanted the cast to feel real to their world, and the contemporary suburban young diverse universe that they inhabit.”
The relatively unknown (but poised for superstardom) actor Sophie Wilde was cast in the film’s central role, playing Mia, a grieving daughter who becomes addicted to spiritual possession as a way to deal with the trauma of her mother’s death. “Sophie we knew was special,” Danny says. “We lost a lot of budget by casting her because she wasn’t a star, but we knew she was worth it. She is going to take over Hollywood.”
Talk to Me is screening nationally in selected cinemas.
To join the conversation, please log in. Don't have an account? Register
Join the conversation, you are commenting as Logout