Talk To Me Ending Explained- The Clues You Missed About What Really Happened To Mia

I’ve been on a possession kick lately. The Granddaddy of all possession movies, The Exorcist, is the mark all others have been measured by. That doesn’t mean there haven’t been a few that were scary. The Last Exorcist and The Exorcism of Emily Rose both haunted me for different reasons. By and large, though, it is tough to do something unique or surprising with the subgenre. Danny and Michael Philippou’s Talk To Me managed to find that diamond in the ghost realm rough.

The indy, critic, and festival darling Talk To Me has been out for several months now and is streaming everywhere on VOD. The genuinely scary film is part cautionary possession tale, part ghost story, and allegory for grief, addiction, and depression. The bleak, ambiguous ending left audiences shaken. What happened to Mia? Is she stuck in the darkness like the rest of the ghosts? Was any of it real? Here’s everything you need to know about the ending of Talk To Me.

In Talk To Me, teenager Mia is struggling with her mother’s suicide. She tries to move on but can’t understand why her mother would leave her. She is close to her best friend’s family but can’t help self-sabotage. When Mia sees social media posts about a hand that allows people to communicate with the dead, she knows she needs to try it. Think of the hand game as an elevated version of Ouija board question sessions. The subject is strapped into a chair and told to grasp the petrified hand of a supposed dead psychic and say the words “Talk to me.”, followed by “I Let You In.” A ghost from the spirit world possesses your body and interacts with the real world.

Why would anyone think this is fun? I can’t imagine, but all the kids do it, including Mia. It bears mentioning that all the ghosts appear to have died violently, and none are particularly peaceful. There are precise rules that must be followed when touching the hand. You can only stay attached for ninety seconds, and the candle lit in front of you must be snuffed right after you let go. If you stay under too long or the candle is left lit, you run the risk of being permanently possessed. If you die while possessed, the spirits will have you for eternity.

It went relatively well the first time, and the group took turns doing it some more while posting it all over social media. Mia’s best friend’s little brother Riley is present, and one or more of the spirits takes an interest in him. By this time, Mia has taken several turns, with one or more of them potentially lasting longer than ninety seconds.

Now Riley asks to take a turn, and when Jade refuses to let him, Mia agrees to allow him to hold the hand for fifty seconds. They strap him in, and the possessed spirit says it is Mia’s mother. She tells Mia she didn’t kill herself, and Mia begs for more time. At this point, all hell breaks loose, and Riley, still possessed by someone, bashes his head in and plucks his eye out before anyone can stop him. They manage to disconnect him from the hand, but no one blows out the candle in the chaos, leaving him vulnerable.

The ending of Talk To Me

In the final moments, Mia becomes convinced Riley, who is trying to recover from his horrendous self-inflicted wounds in the hospital, that she needs to kill him to put him out of his misery. After repeatedly communicating with the hand and meeting several ghosts, Mia no longer knows what is real. They are all lying to her. She stabbed her father after becoming convinced by the spirit pretending to be her mother that her father murdered her. Mia next takes Riley from the hospital in a wheelchair and attempts to push him off of the bridge.

She stopped at the last second, and we saw Mia crash on the road next. The final scene shows Mia walking through the hospital where her father and Riley have recovered, and she no longer has a reflection. Her world goes dark as a candle is shown in the distance. Mia turns to the light and finds herself on the other side of the hand as a new group of young people asks to talk to the spirits. Mia is now stuck in the dark world with all the other ghosts.

The symbolism of the hands and the kangaroos in Talk To Me

Both hands and the injured kangaroo play essential roles in the film. Hands represent connections both false and real. They are the physical embodiment of seeking and finding solace in comfort. Mia has connections with her father and Jade’s family. They love her and care for her. Jade and Riley also care for her, but Mia is constantly plagued by the connections she has lost. It is why the ghosts can so easily manipulate her. The sad irony is that Mia has the connections she craves with those who are with her in the living world.

When she fails to recognize that, she finds more dangerous connections with the spirits who want to possess and destroy her. At critical points in Talk To Me, Mia disconnects from the group. Namely, when Riley hurts himself, Mia walks away in shock and sees someone at the door. The connection to the spirit world was not severed, but she physically divides herself from her friends and family.

After being rejected by Jade’s mother, Mia turns to Daniel, but this is also the wrong connection to make. They are friends, but Daniel is dating Jade. Mia is hurting and making all of the bad decisions as a result. She is selfish and can’t see past her pain to make the right choices.

The kangaroo that Riley and Mia find injured on the road is a pitiful creature that needs help. Mia tries to put it out of its misery but is unable to. She ultimately drives away, hoping someone else will come soon to help it. Riley could be interpreted as the kangaroo as the spirits show him suffering. She tries to take him in his wheelchair up to the highway and kill him to put him out of his misery. The spirits are tricking her, though, as they had already lessened their hold on him, and they wanted Mia to kill him so they could have him forever. At the last minute, Mia seems to see through the lies and throws herself off of the overpass to her death.

If you think of Mia and her mother as the kangaroos, Mia found the courage to put herself out of her misery and save her friend by sacrificing herself. All of this depends on whether or not you believe Mia jumped or was pushed. If she was pushed, all of this is irrelevant, and either Jade or a spirit killed her. Jade seemed to be far enough away that it is unlikely she did it. One of the many spirits Mia came into contact with could have done it. More likely, Mia was tricked into doing it, thinking she was saving her friend when, in reality, she was giving the spirits precisely what they wanted. As witnessed many times, the spirits could control the physical world, so both could have happened.

Just like Cole killed himself in the first scene of Talk To Me when he stabbed Duckett and then himself in the head. It’s also important to note that Riley and Mia hurt themselves by hitting their heads against things. Mia hits herself in the face and head while Riley bashes his head against furniture.

The ghosts love chaos

The ghosts constantly tricked and gaslit them. It’s all about manipulations and lies. Sometimes, they said hateful things like telling Jade her boyfriend was disgusted by her, and others it was pretending to be Mia’s mother. They lied every time they talked to them practically. It wanted Riley to scare and trick him because it was fun for them. I think they knew they couldn’t stay in the real world but enjoyed messing around in it. One of the ghosts is hypersexual and likes the friction the natural world provides, while others prefer mind games.

The ghosts love bedlam. They don’t necessarily care about possessing bodies permanently. That is a fun byproduct that is good for a laugh for a while, but the real end goal is pain and death. We can only guess why they are into some people more than others. Maybe they are drawn to the vulnerable? When the person who invites them in is either fragile because of trauma or innocence, they make a tastier snack. We know there are at least ten or twelve predatory ghosts, according to the directors in the room, and many want Riley.

All of it is a fever dream of Mia’s dying mind.

While I don’t think this is a plausible explanation for Talk To Me, it remains a possibility. Riley and Mia were in a terrible car accident, and nothing we see is real. Riley was severely injured, which explains why he was the only one to have such violence inflicted on him by the ghost. Everything we see is from Mia’s perspective and is unreliable.

In the end, after Mia jumps from the bridge and presumably dies, she sees Riley and his family healed in the hospital and his father walking away. The last we saw of Max, he had been stabbed multiple times and looked very dead at home. If this actually happened, he wouldn’t be walking the halls of the hospital. So much of what happens depends on Mia’s view of her life and the events. If she could not reconcile what happened to her with reality, she could have concocted this entire story to make sense of things.

Wait, is Mia a ghost the whole time and didn’t realize it?

During a pivotal scene in the final act, Mia sees her father find her mother after overdosing on sleeping pills. She panics, looks down at her hand, and realizes her nails are broken and bloody. Is it possible she was the one who committed suicide and everything that has happened since is some weird Sixth Sense thing? Assuming her interactions with all her friends and family can be trusted, she is alive until the movie’s end, so I reject this notion.

Maybe the hand has powers, and Mia was possessed, but everything that happened after the initial ninety seconds was the desperate grasp of life from someone slowly being irreversibly possessed. It’s possible that once the demon or ghost latched onto Mia, she could not extract herself within ninety seconds. Everything that happened from that point forth was from Mia’s perspective. Riley never tried the hand or got hurt. Mia never stabbed her Dad, and nothing bad happened to anyone but Mia.

In this interpretation of Talk To Me, it is possible that Mia was in a coma or a ghost the entire time and didn’t realize it. Several things foreshadow this. The kangaroo is Mia, not Riley. It would be easy to assume the kangaroo represented Riley as he was the one Mia was tricked into helping. We know this was a lie. Her biggest fear was being invisible to her friends and family. Sadly, this is what happens at the end. She is cut off in the spirit world, stuck forever without those around her who love her the most.

Maybe Mia never made it out, and everything we saw was a manifestation of the ghost’s tricks. We know they reveled in lies and created pain and fear. It is distinctly possible that Mia never got out of the demonscape. Her jumping off the bridge was the final revelation that her soul was theirs forever.

If the film is taken at face value, the ghosts that the teens communicate with by using the hand exist and like to mess with the living. They are consumers and want people to play with the hand and invite spirits in. They know that mistakes will be made, and eventually, people will stay too long or forget to blow out the candle. Once that happens, they can keep the living soul forever and add it to the ranks of the dead living inside the dark realm. All the ghosts need is patience and time; they have plenty of the latter.

When Mia, who was vulnerable because of her grief from her mother’s suicide and her own depression, invited the spirit in, the ghosts knew they had the opportunity they needed. That is why everything that happens with all the ghosts after her initial encounter is Mia-centric. It wasn’t just because she was the protagonist of the film but because everything was centered around Mia’s insecurities, fears, and frailties.

Regardless of your view, few people make it out unscathed in Talk To Me. The hand wants more victims and seems to have found at least one more. Talk To Me is currently streaming on VOD everywhere.