Michael Philippou
Michael Philippou is a director, born 1992.
Michael Philippou is one half of RackaRacka, the Adelaide twins who spent years making comedy horror and parody videos on YouTube, performing their own stunts, and who won a Streamy for Best International Channel, Best Overall at the Online Video Awards and an AACTA for Best Web Show before a feature was ever on the table.
The thing worth understanding about that background is the production discipline underneath it. Making a violent, effects-heavy short every few weeks for an internet audience teaches you to plan a gag frame by frame, to build a practical effect that survives being watched twice, and to cut for a viewer whose thumb is already moving. All of that turned out to be transferable. Talk to Me, co-directed with his brother Danny, is precise in a way that first horror features almost never are, and Bring Her Back in 2025 slowed the same craft down and pointed it at grief.
He also works outside the brothers' horror: he voices Charlie in the Australian animated series The Strange Chores, a reminder that the pair came out of comedy long before anyone described them as horror directors. The twins moved to Los Angeles in January 2019 but kept shooting in Australia, where they have said they prefer the filmmaking culture. Street Fighter in 2026 is the next credit on the list.
Movies (3)
TV (1)
Where to start with Michael Philippou
Watch Talk to Me before anything else, and ideally before anyone explains the premise to you. It is the film that made the brothers' names, and the reason it works is craft rather than concept: the scares are staged with a physical precision that comes straight out of years of shooting stunts for the internet.
Bring Her Back is the follow-up and the harder sit. It is slower, sadder and considerably more unpleasant, and it is the film that proves they are directors rather than a viral act. Take it second, and take it seriously.
For contrast, The Strange Chores is his voice work in a kids' animated series and a useful corrective to the idea that these two only do horror. Street Fighter is the mainstream swing to come.