SPOILER WARNING: The following article contains massive spoilers for Talk To Me. If you have not yet seen the film, proceed at your own risk!
Danny and Michael Philippou's Talk To Me seems destined to become the next big fan-favorite horror movie. The movie has been building hype since its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in January, and it has earned widespread acclaim for its unique premise and big time scares. The exciting A24 genre feature also features a conclusion that is both twisty and packs an emotional punch – and we’ve put together this guide to break it all down.
Sophie Wilde’s Mia faces a complicated fate at the end of Talk To Me, and if you are confused at all regarding what happens, you are in the right place. Before digging into the explanation, however, let’s first do a quick recap of the film’s final scenes.
What Happens At The End Of Talk To Me
After getting a glimpse into the hell in which Riley’s soul is trapped, being tricked by her dead mother into killing her father, and convinced that there are no other options available to her, a shell-shocked Mia does what she sees as the only end to everything. She calls Jade and lures her away from her brother’s hospital room, and when she sees her best friend drive away, Mia makes her move.
Mia goes to Riley’s unconscious body, but her plan is temporarily interrupted when Jade and Riley’s mom, Sue, appears in the doorway. She apologizes to the protagonist for her outburst and dismissal after Riley’s “accident,” and she tells Mia that she’s not just a friend, but family. They have an emotional moment of reconciliation, and Mia requests that she have a moment alone with Riley.
Parked outside Mia’s house, Jade honks her car horn and tries to call Mia and is frustrated when neither gets a response. She decides to go inside, and when she discovers what happened to Mia’s father, she understands that Riley is in extreme danger. She calls her mother to warn her, but by the time Sue gets back to the hospital room, they are both gone.
While Jade is figuring out what is going on, Mia tries to kill Riley, but she is unable to – despite horrible taunts from the spirit possessing him. She decides to take him out of the hospital, and she puts him in a wheelchair to get him outside and roll him toward the highway. With the support of her dead mother behind her and being told that she is doing the right thing, Mia prepares to push Riley into traffic… but Jade gets to them in the nick of time.
There is a massive car crash, and after a beat, Mia is in the street and gets up from a prone position. She appears scratched up but not severely injured, and all around her she can see people getting out of their vehicles and making phone calls. Nearby are Jade and Riley together on the side of the road. Suddenly, Mia is then back in the hospital wandering the halls. In a room she sees a healthy Riley with his mother and sister, and walking away from her appears to be her father. People start disappearing and lights start to go out. She looks in a mirror and sees no reflection – and her chase after her father ends as he gets on an elevator and she is left in total darkness.
As Mia stands in blackness, a candle is lit. She runs to the light, and when she gets there, she finds the candle on a table, and a hand comes out of the darkness. She takes the hand, and she sees that it belongs to a young man who is at a party with friends and is shocked to see her. He describes what he sees to his friends in Spanish, looks at her, and says, “I let you in.”
Where Is Mia At The End Of Talk To Me?
When Mia gets up off of the highway at the end of Talk To Me, she appears to be perfectly fine… but it’s a slow reveal that she definitely isn’t. It’s implied that Jade got to the side of the highway in time to save her brother, but the only way to actually to accomplish that task was to eliminate the threat to his life a.k.a. she pushes Mia into traffic before Mia can push Riley.
After standing up on the highway, Mia is dead, and one can interpret that her path slowly takes her away from the living world and into the netherworld. It appears that she can briefly still see across the planes of existence and that time flows differently – which is why she is able to first spot Jade and Riley on the side of the highway and then witness them being happy and healthy with their mother – but the final destination for her seems to be the darkness.
As far as Mia seeing her father goes, that raises its own questions. We can guess that she sees him because he died just shortly before her – but are we meant to determine from the elevator he gets on that he is going to a different afterlife than the one Mia is trapped in? That’s left up to the interpretation of the viewer.
So what happens at the very, very end? It’s simple: the ceramic-covered embalmed hand has somehow found its way into the possession of another group of people, and they are using it just as Mia and her friends were. Given everything we witness, it’s pretty hard to imagine that there is going to be a happy ending to their story.
Talk To Me is now playing in theaters everywhere. You can keep up to date with all of the exciting scary films on the way to cinemas and streaming in the coming months with our Upcoming Horror Movies guide, and our Upcoming A24 Movies feature has you covered regarding all of the titles coming from the indie studio.
