Love and Monsters premieres at home and in select theaters tomorrow from Paramount Pictures, and takes place seven years after the "Monsterpocalypse." Humanity has been forced to hide underground, but Joel (Dylan O'Brien, The Maze Runner) decides to embark on a mission to reunite with his high school girlfriend Aimee (Jessica Henwick, Iron Fist) after reconnecting with her over the radio. However, with dangerous monsters standing in his way, their reunion isn't going to be easy.
We've already shared some details of our chats with Michael Rooker (Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2) and Ariana Greenblatt (Avengers: Infinity War), and we recently caught up with director Michael Matthews to discuss the movie.
We'll bring you that full interview tomorrow, but during our conversation we got the filmmaker - who is also known for his stellar work on 2017's Five Fingers for Marseilles - to talk about this movie's four leads, their characters, and why they were the right fit for this must-see action-adventure.
You can check out our spoiler-free review of Love and Monsters by clicking here, and we'll have more for you from Michaels - along with Henwick, Greenblatt, and Rooker - a little later today.
Michael Rooker
They each bring something so unique and special to it, and I feel really fortunate to have had the cast we have. Michael Rooker, I've been a fan of for many years. He just brings a lived in, rough survival quality, and he doesn't have to try to put anything on to convey that. It was almost interesting then to take that and know we were trying to bring a bit more heart to him and warmth and paternal fatherliness which worked really interestingly for him.
Jessica Henwick
Jessica really had a lot of good chemistry. Not in a romantic way, but a jive that she and Dylan had when they did screen tests to see how that felt. They just looked like they were two people I could imagine getting on, and they get each other's humour and it's not too stiff. They felt really good together.
On the other side for Aimee, Jessica's character, she had to do that and then have this big jump to the person we meet at the end of the film who has grown up a lot more and matured a lot more than Joel has. It feels like she's become a much more functioning person in that society who has had to deal with difficult things. She could do both of those as well as fend for herself on the action front at the end of the movie where she's got to do some pretty difficult cool stunts, and it was nice not to have to use a stunt double for the majority of it because she's really well-trained and physically capable.
Ariana Greenblatt
Then, there's Ariana, who just blew everyone away with her flair and charisma, and the way she would sort of run circles around everyone and dominate everyone even though she's 11 years old. She's just this personality that's grown up in the apocalypse, doesn't know anything else about the world, so isn't stuck in the doom and gloom of it because that just is her life. She's got a lot to give and wants to know about things. When she meets Joel, there's a lot of push and pull there of her being excited about this new person she's met.
Dylan O'Brien
Dylan, the first time we met and chatted, we got along really well and saw the same thing for the character and tone of the movie. For him to do something that was different to things he's done before was key. Joel has a socially underdeveloped nature and awkwardness and an innocence that's quite charming, and an ignorance because he's quite clueless about the world all because he spent seven years not really growing up. For his core teenage years when you learn about love, life, and society, he's been in a bunker! He's stifled in that way, and that worked really well for the entertainment of watching him, and he really pulled that off well.
I learned so much from Dylan through this process just in terms of bringing certain scenes to life and the humour. We really got along well, and sometimes went a bit too far off the rails doing things that seemed funny to us, but will other people think it's funny? I don't know! We had to open that space up to allow him to play around a bit so that you could get those gold nuggets that feel like they happened in the moment and they feel honest, and not contrived or too forced. Dylan was incredible to work with and is an amazing actor, for sure.
And then there's Boy! [Laughs]
Check out an exclusive clip from Love and Monsters ahead of the movie's release tomorrow: