How a First-Time Director Handled the Huge Problems of Out of Darkness

“Never work with children or animals,” goes the old show business saying. Newbie filmmaker Andrew Cumming technically stuck to that wisdom… although “creature movie set in the Stone Age” might soon belong on the list of things to avoid for your own sanity.

Set 45,000 years ago and set in the Scottish Highlands, Out of the dark It follows six prehistoric humans as they disembark on a new world, in search of an evolved future. Cumming, Ruth Greenberg and Oliver Kassman wrote the script in a completely fictional language called Tola, with a story that has the group’s immediate survival efforts threatened by something lurking in the shadows. As the leaders of patriarchal society fall, a young woman, Beyah (Safia Oakley-Green), faces the threat herself. With just enough thick atmosphere in mind to imbue familiar horror tropes with much-needed specificity, Cumming’s directorial debut kicks off a promising career. But making the film was not easy.

With Out of the darkness In theaters, I spoke with Cumming about hitting it big and sticking with it, despite the many raised eyebrows he encountered over the years of the film’s development.

Out of the darkness It’s been a journey. How many years ago did you start working on it?

We put pen to paper in September 2015. That’s when we first turned words into sentences on the topic.

This is her directorial debut. Very few people start out making a prehistoric horror film. Did it feel like a risk? Do you still do it?

It comforts me now, but not at the time, because there wasn’t really a model. In a lot of debuts, you can say, “Okay, I see this is a contemporary drama” or “It’s kind of a comedy thriller,” you can see what it’s about. But then when we were pitching this movie, we said, “Oh, it’s a little bit like Alien. But it’s also a bit like The Hills Have Eyes. Also, The witch?” So you borrow percentages from all these different movies and make this Frankenstein’s monster, and then you say, “Oh, by the way, it’s my first movie, it’ll be in a made-up language, a discovery cast.”

But it moved me. I felt like this was a movie I would pay for. I felt like it could be really cool and say something about humanity. But even when we were filming… I remember the day before we started filming, I told the cast that I was worried that this was going to be a big Scooby-Doo movie. Without giving anything away, you’re always worried that people will think it’s stupid. When we introduced it, they always asked us, “Do they talk?” I was worried that people were expecting a Raquel Welch throwback (like the 1966 film). One million years before Christ), or something more tender like Alpha. I was filled with a lot of anxiety, because it was my first feature film and because there was no road map for making the prehistoric horror film.

It’s a clever speech on paper, but how did you find a way to get to the actual premise? What brought you to this alien world?

The operative thesis was: this is a film that posed the question: Have humans survived thanks to our own inhumanity? So that was what we kept coming back to, whether it was through a patriarchal bully, or through that kind of weird spiritual dogmatic elder, or through abusive youth, whatever you want to call it, however humanity presents itself. Or whether it’s through the wars that are happening as we speak. That was the guiding principle: Are we at the top of the food chain because when things go wrong, when we’re afraid, we can just turn on each other and do the most heinous, evil things to each other to stay alive? So that cycle of fear leading to survival and just going around in circles seemed like a good fit.

With your first feature film, I think you’re leaning on your own influences, either unconsciously or you’re very conscious of it. And one of them for me, Oliver and Ruth was Alien. Many things have been written about Alien – I’m not going to add any new information there. It’s just a fantastic movie. It is more than the sum of its parts. It’s a horror movie. It’s a science fiction movie. It’s one of the first movies I remember seeing that features a woman who rises to the top and takes control, but she’s not a tough person. She is simply a woman who finds herself in a terrible situation, that she has done everything she can to get through.

There is a lot of structural overlap between Alien and Out of the darkness. We borrow that structure shamelessly, because it works. And it was really important: it wasn’t like Eeny meeny miny moe, let’s choose Alien. We wanted to chart Beyah’s journey from being an orphan to becoming a super predator. He Alien The template works because she is the smallest of the litter. She has been oppressed her entire life. And if this group hadn’t encountered this supernatural presence, she would have turned out to be like Ave, the leader’s pregnant companion, just this downtrodden, downtrodden woman.

When the spear is finally given to Beyah, it turns out that she is actually quite capable and has a lot of hatred and venom inside her, due to how she was raised and what she was subjected to. She then she felt like Alien and Out of the darkness they were exploring the same thematic journey.

And what I love about the Alien saga, especially the first two films, is that, from a xenomorphic point of view, Ellen Ripley is a genocidal maniac. So that also fueled Out of the darknessbecause the movie becomes a meditation on all these things I’ve said, on what you’re willing to do when things get bad.

You worked extensively with experts to develop a unique language for prehistoric people, and yet dialogue is limited. How did that challenge casting? What did you finally look for in your actors?

First of all, you need that group, that core set, to look like they have the same ancestors. She occasionally joked that we were forming a pop supergroup. You’re working with tropes. Well, you have the tall and athletic one, you have the clown, you have the scholar, you have the “virgin”; I’m borrowing some Cabin in the woods here, but you get my point. You take these tropes and then it’s about how you subvert them and play with them throughout the film.

Then when you’re casting the movie, you don’t know exactly what you’re looking for, but then someone with a certain energy comes along. Safia came in and read for Beyah; She was just this force of nature, this little 19-year-old pocket rocket who had dancer training, so she was incredibly physical in the way she moved, but she could act. Then we got Beyah and I thought it was going to be harder. Sometimes you just get lucky. And each brought something quite different, but when you combine them, all their energies bounced off each other in a really useful way.

Then we talked about costumes and makeup. I encouraged my production and costume designer to go see Inuit fashion, because they live in a similar climate, and when they kill an animal, they use every part of it in their costumes and jewelry, etc. So it was all about trying to make these people feel human, to have culture and express themselves, to have real intelligence and artistic abilities. I think that helps them feel a little more lived-in and more like three-dimensional characters rather than wax figures in the museum.

Did creating your own language give you some freedom for the actors to say whatever they wanted to sound better? Could you break the rules?

I don’t know how it happens to other directors, but I have a strong sense of rhythm and dialogue. Somebody told me When I read the script, there was a certain musicality to it. I think that helps actors learn their lines better, giving them a sense of rhythm. They are speaking in this language, Tola, so the first thing is: Do I believe it in the eyes? Beyah wants something from Geirr, so do I believe Safia’s performance that she really wants this? Since they don’t speak English, you don’t care about the words, you only care about the intention.

And then it’s just that thing of: Does it have rhythm? Do you feel inhabited? Are there colloquialisms? Does this line have too many syllables? Can we shorten it and make it seem more vivid, that these two people are friends, rather than strangers who just met? They would have a different way of talking to each other. So yeah, you just feel it in the moment. We didn’t write an encyclopedia, it was a script, and the only thing you ask after each take is: I believed it? And if you say no, you do it again.

The film makes the most of the beautiful, misty Scottish landscapes. How did it change the land, the way you wanted to stage the action, and some of the creepier horror beats?

Originally, at the midpoint of the movie, they come across what we call the “blood pit.” Originally, that blood pit was supposed to be at the bottom of a 30-foot cliff. And we couldn’t find a 30-foot cliff anywhere within 45 minutes of our hotel, so eventually we had to change it and create this rock that became an altar. And something pretty horrible happens at that altar that was originally supposed to be something related to the cliff. A complicated example, but one of those moments where Ruth and I looked at each other and said, “We’re not going to find this, we have to think of something else.” And then what you come up with is infinitely better.

We were in some places where you’re ankle-deep in swampy swamps. So we couldn’t put any tracks in there, but I didn’t want to use the handheld. Then it is Can we get it to lie flat and not sink mid-shot? It was a challenge every day. Even with the weather changing from day to day, you would see a place with beautiful sunshine, and then you get there and there are 40 mile per hour winds. That changes performance, it changes the way you’re going to film, it changes your energy levels. So you’re reacting to things every day, but trying to hold on to that thesis, how each scene leads us toward the outcome. As long as you have that thesis tattooed under your eyelids, you’re fine.

Who or what was the light that guided you through all of this?

I am a disciple of David Fincher. I saw Seven too young, and that formed a big part of my character. I also came of age when (Steven) Soderbergh was making some extremely interesting movies. But even going back to John Ford, Hitchcock or Polanski, are you allowed to say Polanski? – Any filmmaker who has an idea of ​​what the hell he wants to do and executes it, and it seems like there’s been a plan, is a good start.

Let it be known that you also have a giant akira Poster hanging on the wall of your office.

I convinced my dad to buy me. akira on VHS when I was 11 because I thought it was a Disney movie. While the rest of my friends were watching real Disney movies, I was watching akira.