Today, Hulu debuts a brand new action-thriller called No Exit, which is based on Taylor Adams' acclaimed novel of the same name. Ahead of its release, we were able to sit down with director Damien Power (Killing Ground) to break down the making of this exciting thriller.
Among the things we discussed, he spoke at length about crafting the film's elaborate visitor center set, realizing some of the film's biggest twists, staying true to the novel, and whether he left anything on the cutting room floor.
The main cast features Havana Rose Liu (The Sky is Everywhere; Mayday) as Darby Thorne, Danny Ramirez (The Falcon and the Winter Soldier; Top Gun: Maverick) as Ash, David Rysdahl (Nine Days; That's Not Us) as Lars, Dennis Haysbert (24; Heat) as Ed, Dale Dickey (Hell or High Water; Iron Man 3) as Sandi, and newcomer Mila Harris (King Saud; The Hill) as Jay.
Check out the full spoiler-free video interview below, and keep scrolling for the full transcript!
ROHAN: From watching the film, I never would've guessed the visitor center was actually a practical set that you built on a soundstage rather a real location, but it's such a great set and really feels like the film's sixth major character - can you tell me more about creating that set and how it helps make the feature almost feel like a play?
DAMIEN: Yeah, I mean, I think if people start googling Muir’s Rest, and try to find out where it was, then, you know, we've done our work, done our job really well. Yeah, one of the pleasures of the film was actually making the entire thing on a soundstage. Nobody, I think, wanted to spend months shooting a movie on top of a mountain in a blizzard at night, so having that control was fantastic. Gary Mackay, who was the production designer, designed this beautiful Visitor Center, we sat it in the parking lot, everything was a completely practical set. So, you could walk in and out of that building, which was built with timber, had a roof on it, it existed as a building in the space and I feel like that gave all of the cast this sense of reality. It wasn't just a kind of cardboard set where you walked around the corner, and everything kind of fell away, it actually felt like a real space.
David, who plays Lars, referred to it as a kind of bloody snowglobe and that's what it kind of felt like. It really felt like this special place where we could go and play. So, when we rehearsed with the cast, I tried to get them into the set and be rehearsing on set as much as I could in the weeks leading up to the shoot. Obviously, there was a lot of people trying to finish the build, so it wasn't always possible, but I remember we went in there on a weekend and we rehearsed a lot of one of the stunt sequences towards the end of the film, when everything kind of comes to a head and that was great. I had some ideas about blocking and how that might work, but having the actors in the space with our stunt coordinator, John Costello, and just to be able to walk around, filming it for myself, was fantastic. We made a lot of discoveries about what would work and how best to do it in that space.
ROHAN: The film is a pretty tight 90 minutes and it really does keep you on the edge of your seat - did you end up leaving anything on the cutting room floor or was there ever a longer version you tested?
DAMIEN: No, I am sure that the first cut of the film was a lot longer, but I don't think that there was anything that we ended up leaving on the cutting room floor that I missed. I think it was always, like editing always is, this process of refinement to find the essence of the film. It was always a pretty lean script, so, yeah, what you're looking at is I think the best version of the film.
ROHAN: While I believe you stay fairly true to the novel, can you speak on some of the deviations you do take, especially at the beginning and end of the film?
DAMIEN: Yeah, I think that, for the most part, the film sticks pretty closely to the plot of the novel and I think where we made some changes, it was either because some things were suggested by elements that were already in the story, like the nail gun, for example, and we thought that how can we make the most use or the best use of this as an idea? Certainly, it's this idea that they're kind of improvising things and making stuff up as they're going along and some of those changes I think we made because we felt that those would be the most cinematic version of that story while staying true to the characters and their intent in them in the mood and the atmosphere of the original story.
ROHAN: The film has a ton of huge twists, with every twist essentially serving as an act break. Was there any twist, in particular, that you found most difficult to realize? What kind of challenge did the script present?
DAMIEN: Yeah, so that was one of the things that really drew me to the story was that it was a great suspenseful edge of you seat thriller, but it also had this mystery and these twists, and those kinds of twists and turns are not things that you necessarily see in this genre. So, they were a big hook for me wanting to make the film. I think that it was so much fun and we put a lot of thought into how we were actually going to deliver those moments, because they come as a surprise to every character in the room, pretty much, but also to the audience.
So, really, it was about showing those reveals, if you like, from the point of view of Darby, who is trying to find out what's going on. Then, I think, to make sure that we deliver, not only the surprise, but also, the emotional impact and I think that's why these reveals land, because we are, as an audience, invested in trying to work out the truth of the story, but we're also invested in these characters. I think that we care and that's why the film and those moments, in particular, have the impact that they do.
ROHAN: You've directed a number of shorts, but I believe this is only your second feature - what would you say is the biggest difference between a short and a film or do you find your process to be fairly similar on both?
DAMIEN: Well, I think that shorts are a sprint, and a feature film is a marathon. I think the biggest difference is just the amount of time and energy and effort that you have to sustain through not only the shoot and the post production, but also in the years it takes to get these projects up and happening, so that's the real difference. In terms of what you're actually doing on set on the day, it’s the same.
20th Century Studio’s suspense/thriller “No Exit” is the story of Darby Thorne, a young woman en route to a family emergency who is stranded by a blizzard and forced to find shelter at a highway rest area with a group of strangers. When she stumbles across an abducted girl in a van in the parking lot, it sets her on a terrifying life-or-death struggle to discover who among them is the kidnapper
No Exit is now streaming, exclusively on Hulu!