With her latest supernatural thriller, Lockbox, now playing in theaters, we recently had the opportunity to sit down with the one-and-only Carla Gugino and director Daniel Stamm to break down all the gnarly twists and turns as the former Watchmen star faces one of her darkest challenges yet.
In our exclusive chat, Gugino reveals how, despite not being the biggest horror fan, she is able to connect with the human element of these stories and explains why her latest character is among the most resilient she has ever played. Then, Stamm walks us through one of the film's most intense sequences, which involved a contortionist and multiple demons!
As per the synopsis, "Seeking peace after her mother's death, Ellen retreats to a rural town and takes in her severely traumatized cousin Winthrop. Their fragile domestic balance shatters when an erratic neighbor warns that Winthrop is dangerous. As strange phenomena escalate, Ellen must put everything on the line to defend Winthrop from a dangerous otherworldly entity determined to track him down."
The cast features Carla Gugino (The Haunting of Hill House, Gerald's Game, The Fall of the House of Usher), Lou Taylor Pucci (Evil Dead, Touch Me), and Katharine Isabella (Ginger Snaps, Backrooms).
Daniel Stamm (The Last Exorcism; 13 Sins; Prey for the Devil) helmed the feature, with a screenplay from Soren Narnia and Justin Yoffe.
Lockbox is now playing in theaters!
Watch our full interview below and/or keep scrolling to read the full transcription. Plus, remember to subscribe to our YouTube channel for more exclusive content!
ROHAN: Carla, you’re no stranger to these psychological horror films, having also done Gerald’s Game a few years ago, and then now, Lockbox also shares a similar tone. What is it about navigating these characters within these traumatized spaces that help you find your comfort level as a performer?
CARLA: You know, it's interesting, because I am not a horror fan, per se. I'm always a fan of any story that compels me in regards to, and it always comes from character, you know, which is natural as an actress, I guess, but one of the things I do think is that, you know, the horror space allows you to tell a heightened story where you actually reveal the truths of the human psyche, and so, in Gerald's Game, they're obviously two entirely different characters, because in Gerald's Game, Jesse was the one who was dealing with trauma and with sort of disassociation and having kind of put her past behind her and having it come back and haunt her, and in this case, Ellen is somebody who, you know, really kind of says yes when most people will say no, you know, whether it be to a stranger or to a relative who has suffered a lot, and she doesn't kind of know what she's in for, but she's there to try to help, and in both cases, I guess what draws me in is just the psychological exploration of the fact that I think when we have trauma, to your point, you know, even in our real lives, it's something that's just incredibly difficult to navigate, and so this genre is a really good one for revealing that.
ROHAN: Daniel, building off that, your films, including this one, have traditionally featured stories about possession and unseen, sinister forces. What makes you so comfortable in these dark spaces and telling these stories that aren’t necessarily easy to tell?
DANIEL: I'll be completely honest with you, obviously, in Hollywood, once you make one movie that is reasonably successful, that is the genre you get suggested for again and again and again. So, I just get better scripts in the possession genre than I get in other genres, you know, and because I'm very much like Carla, in terms of, I don't care about genre, I'm not inherently a horror guy, I really look for the stories and the characters that I have the feeling are not a copy of a copy of a copy, and I've seen it 20,000 times, and if that happens to be in the possession space, then that's what it is. So, it's not that I'm seeking it out and I'm saying I can't wait to make another possession movie, you know, it's kind of the opposite, because especially the exorcism genre is very narrow, there's only so much you can do, and you will always get the same comment afterwards, which is, well, The Exorcist was better, so if anything, I would stay away from the exorcism genre, unless the story is a really great one, so that would be my answer to that. I like dark stuff for the same reasons that Carla just said, because it's very revealing of the human condition, that kind of conflict, that kind of existential, you know, darkness that is facing the characters, but it wouldn't necessarily have to be possession.
ROHAN: Carla, at the beginning of the film, your character is in the process of grieving her mother’s death, and during that time, she happens to reconnect with Winthrop. What does she see in him and what he’s going through that helps kickstart her own healing?
CARLA: Yeah, you know, I think, in this particular case, you know, those things in life that you made a decision at one point and it may have felt like the right or inevitable decision then, and you look back now with sort of 20/20 hindsight vision, and, you think, oh boy, I wish I had done something different, and the ramifications of that are really extreme. In this case, they really are, because ultimately when Ellen was, you know, in her teenage years, she babysat Winthrop, and she knew him as a kid, and I think he really looked up to her, and, you know, she promised that she would always be there for him, and at the point at which his parents died in a tragic accident, he was then given, before foster care, to an uncle that mistreated him, and as a young woman, she really tried to get her parents to take him in, and they wouldn't, and she acquiesced, and went to college, and so, I think, you know, then he went on to fight, you know, go into the army, and sort of live a life that was really bleak ultimately. And, I think this opportunity, she thinks she can sort of right a previous wrong in her mind, so in that way I think given the opportunity to potentially help him, she is really excited to have that, and she's in a place too, where, as you said, because she has always been somebody's something, you know, she was a caretaker to her mother, she was like all of the things that life sort of makes her, and so, she's in a moment of who am I, and I think you know, in taking him in, she's hoping to figure out what that is.
ROHAN: Daniel, there’s a real great needle drop moment in the third act where we get to see these really wicked demons you conjured up for the movie. How much of that was practical versus CGI?
DANIEL: We did a lot of practical stuff. We have, again, it's hard to talk about without giving anything away, but something might or might not happen to Carla's hand at some point in the movie, which was very much all like wires and very old school stuff, and then, we might or might not have a creature that we got a real contortionist for, and I've learned that in my possession movie experience now that there are different contortionists that can do different things, and one thing that seems to be very hard is the bending over backwards and running really fast kind of a thing.
CARLA: Because most people can do that. *laughs*
DANIEL: Yeah, most people. *laughs* Because I did that with the last movie, we hired a great contortionist, amazing, and then, I learned after we'd flown her in, that is a very special skill that doesn't come as a package with the contortionist. Yeah, so we flew someone in who could do that amazingly in a rubber suit, and I think we almost killed him because it was so hot in that. Do you remember that, Carla?
CARLA: I sure do!
DANIEL: It was so hot in that suit that the sweat was messing up the sound, because it was just splattering on the floors, as if someone had switched on a faucet. So, there was a lot of practical stuff. But, of course, a lot of it you clean up with visual effects afterwards, and, you know, that when you're doing it, which parts will be cleaned up and which won’t.
ROHAN: Carla, despite everything she’s going through at the beginning and everything she goes through throughout the course of the film, we can really see how much of a survivor Ellen really is. She has this real perseverance, this resilience that keeps her going, which is something we’ve seen from some of your past characters. Did you see it the same way or how did you approach that side of her?
CARLA: Yeah, no, I think that's absolutely accurate. I think the thing that's different with her, for me, and what kind of drew me to this was this ordinary woman, was this woman who had nothing from the outside. She didn't seem particularly strong or bold or tenacious or strong in that way, but the truth is she has true faith, and I think that that's something that, you know, many of us struggle with. Faith and true faith, and, you know, the world is filled with so much complexity that it's hard to have genuine faith, and so, I found it really interesting that, in a strange way, her tenacious nature is this gentle kind that's attached to the fact that she ultimately does have faith that the right thing will be done, and again, without giving anything away, you know, we're going to understand the level of her resilience in the end, based on her faith, and so, in that way, I think I've played a lot of characters that are more, you know, overtly tough, or we know that they're not to be messed with in certain ways, and those are really fun characters, because you know they're sort of like, I feel like you learn something from every character, I learn something from every character I play, and I guess in this one there was something about her quiet nature that I found a really unusual quality to have at the center of your story.
Seeking peace after her mother's death, Ellen retreats to a rural town and takes in her severely traumatized cousin Winthrop. Their fragile domestic balance shatters when an erratic neighbor warns that Winthrop is dangerous. As strange phenomena escalate, Ellen must put everything on the line to defend Winthrop from a dangerous otherworldly entity determined to track him down. From the director of THE LAST EXORCISM, LOCKBOX is inspired by the cult podcast “Knifepoint Horror” and is based on an original story by writer, creator, and narrator Soren Narnia.