The Blackening and more new horror movies with creepy props

Props from iconic horror films become lightning rods for fan obsession, driving us deeper into the story as we explore their lore, the ideas behind their creation, and the stories of how they were made. Lately we’re obsessing over a ceramic hand, a book and a board game. Find out what this has to do with three new films on Showmax this August: Talk to Me, Evil Dead Rise, and The Blackening. 

Talk to Me: The hand

Adelaide-based brothers Danny and Michael Philippou went from messing about on their YouTube channel RackaRacka, to winning the 2024 Saturn Award for Best Horror Film with Talk To Me – beating the likes of Renfield, Evil Dead Rise, Scream VI, and Smile. And it’s kind of thanks to the kids’ TV series Bluey. Well, Daley Pearson, executive producer of Bluey…and a prop hand that has horror fans firmly in its icy grip. 

The Philippou brothers combined ideas from Daley’s short concept film about a group of kids playing around with possession, with their experience seeing a recording of kids filming their young neighbour on their phones while he convulsed during a bad drug experience. And they came up with a film about a group of bored Australian teens filming each other having ghostly encounters using an eerie severed hand. 

This left hand – which was first embalmed and then coated in ceramic – supposedly belonged to a powerful medium. You light a candle, grip the hand, say “Talk to me,” and then “I let you in”, to allow a spirit from the other side to possess you for 90 seconds before you have to let go, while a friend blows out the candle to dismiss the entity. 

Danny and Michael developed an entire book of lore about the hand while writing the film, including the stories of everyone who’s ever used it and who they contacted. But the people we see using it in Talk to Me have only a vague idea of its origins or the rules surrounding how to use it – and the Philippous warn that even those rules aren’t necessarily the rules that the hand itself plays by. 

The prop itself went through so many iterations and so much fine tuning that it only arrived on set on the third day of filming. As many as 18 hands were cast in all sorts of positions until the brothers finally settled on a cast that Talk To Me’s production designer Bethany Ryan made of her own hand, in a pose that suggested the fingers could clasp tight on a wrist at any minute. The hand is covered in writing and while most of the words are just names, the brothers hint that there are some Easter eggs. Pause and you might spot phrases like “Help Mia”, “This vessel is empty”, or “This must be hell”. 

Talk to Me’s production team worked with six prop hands, of which three wound up broken. The Philippous have one of the surviving hands, actress Sophie Wild (Mia) has another, but the third hand has gone missing. Reach out now. Do you feel it reaching back? 

Stream Talk to Me on Showmax now

Evil Dead Rise: The Necronomicon 

The Necronomicon Ex-Mortis or Naturom Demonto – a Book of the Dead written in blood and bound in human skin – has been a horror fan favourite ever since Sam Raimi’s original 1981 horror comedy film, The Evil Dead. Director Lee Cronin’s latest contribution to the dead-verse, Evil Dead Rise, gives the sinister tome a makeover in a film crammed with references that’ll tickle horror movie buffs, including a recreation of a bathroom from The Shining. 

Long-time Evil Dead producer Rob Tapert lent one of the original Necronomicons to Elise Kowitz, the property master in Evil Dead Rise, as a reference point before she set about refining and expanding on the idea. And she and her team have created an even more detailed version that fans can freeze-frame and pore over in HD. 

“I knew I wanted the book to have a fresh identity. I liked the idea that it felt a little bit more alive,” says Lee. “The book itself, the skin, is created with a lot of veins and arteries, and gives the sense that it was once alive or active in some way. ” Elise adds, “We went with the idea that it’s been made from a victim struck by a lightning bolt, and the spine is based on the creepy dried skin of a petrified cat.”

Elise, Lee and production designer Nick Bassett worked with concept artist Al Gillies, who created several versions of the Necronomicon for the film, which got tweaked even more following camera tests. While the final version of the Necronomicon has 400 pages, 50 of these pages are unique, fully realised works of art, which are then repeated as copies for the remaining 350 pages. The book’s illustrations were inspired by the detailed scientific drawings of Leonardo da Vinci and other classical artists. An illustrator also helped create the text, which is based on an ancient Celtic language called Ogham. It’s the most detailed of all the film versions of the book to date. “It looks like it’s been devised by someone that’s super-obsessive, so every corner is covered in text,” says Elise. 

The production team also consulted a professional bookbinder throughout the process to ensure that when it was opened, the book could lie flat for filming. There were four shooting versions of the Necronimicon and all in all, it took three months to create the prop. “There were lots of mistakes along the way,” Elise admits with a laugh. “We originally had a lot fewer veins, and then Lee wanted more veins on the front, so we had to pull up our leather, add more and then start the process again.” 

Stream Evil Dead Rise on Showmax now

The Blackening: The Blackening board game

Tracy Oliver and Dewayne Perkins’ horror comedy script for The Blackening was based on a short film that Dewayne created with the Chicago-based comedy troupe 3Peat back in 2016. Looking for a way to get the entire troupe in one sketch, he came up with the idea of an all-Black horror film. Dewayne took the unfortunate trope of Black characters dying first in horror movies and asked what would happen if the entire cast were Black. As The Blackening’s tagline quips, “We can’t all die first.” 

The film focuses on a group of Black friends celebrating Junetheenth in a cabin in the woods, where they explore the cabin’s game room, complete with its centrepiece: a ragged copy of the jaw droppingly racist board game The Blackening. One character nicknames it, “Jim Crow Monopoly”, while another guesses that for its power source, it must “run off of racism.” 

Production on the film actually started with the board game. And director Tim Story, and production designer Cecil Gentry have noted that they went all out to make it as visually offensive as possible, while also bringing elements of the idea of the players moving through a forest into the board design. 

At the centre of the board is a timer in the shape of a head like the Little Black Sambo caricature. The game “track” starts with a cabin in the woods and ends with a well, where we see the words “You Survive” written on the board. Images around the game board include a crossbow, an animal trap, a dagger, a splash, and a couple of gears. There are also gold game “tokens” for each player including a die, an apple, a pyramid, a bottle, a purse, a crown and a book. As players move around the board, they land on squares and the timer’s voice prompts them to read out the game’s trivia cards, which ask questions about contemporary Black culture. They have to answer correctly before the timer reaches one minute to move to the next space. The catch? If the players can’t answer 10 questions correctly, a hidden game “master” who’s a masked killer will murder one of them…starting with the one who’s “the Blackest”.

It’s a sneaky premise that lures viewers into playing along to see if they know the answers to questions like “Name one Black character that survived a horror movie.” Or “How many seasons did dark Aunt Viv play Aunt Viv in The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air before being replaced by light-skinned Aunt Viv?”. Or “Can you name 15 inventions created by Black inventors?”

In real life, most of the cast soon got to a question they couldn’t answer. And what Dewayne wanted to show is that the characters needed to lean on each other to survive, and that the lived experience each person brings to the “game” is essential for everyone’s success. 

But beware! As with any situation in which people are out to gatekeep and police someone’s Black authenticity, there are trick questions on the board. 

Stream The Blackening on Showmax now.

PS: In 2022, Dewayne Perkins and Tom Story were tapped to head up an animated series based on the board game, Clue.

Read more about horror on Showmax.