The idea for this movie came about after I had just walked out half way through a $200 million superhero blockbuster playing at the local movie house.
It was terrible; there seemed to be a thinking that if they just add enough bells and whistle, enough explosions and fast cars, perhaps people won’t know that they don’t actually have a story to tell here.
So I decided to strip it all away. Just get to the heart story, find the essence that makes a
compelling, intriguing story. And the more I thought of this, this stripping away, the clearer
and more immediate the story became.
I knew I wanted to do a psychological thriller. So I just cut back and cut back until all I was left with was a cabin in the mountains and two main characters. I needed nothing else. The main thing was the riveting dynamic between these two completely different people. The tension came from this tautness. And when I built the story around that, I found that the tension was dramatically increased by the sheer unrelenting focus of our leads and their predicament.
Making it work
As I wrote, I slowly racked up the tension between these to characters until I managed to get to that ‘edge of your seat’ point — the point where the audience knows that this is gong to end badly — and at very turn the tension is almost unbearable.
And this was all coming from the story, as opposed to computer-generated monsters.
Once I’d built it up to that point of tension, that heightened state that all thrillers need to get to, I knew we could pull this off. I knew that we could engage an audience — not only engage them, but have them invested, completely immersed.
You don’t need explosions; you need a
story, a compelling story. That’s what gets an audience on the edge of their seats.
The best of the basics
There are other elements that led to the movie being received so well both locally and internationally: the best cast and crew this country has, the beautiful cinematography, and the strongest musical score I’ve ever heard on a South African movie.
But ultimately, we had a thrilling story and I think that made all the difference. We didn’t need explosions.