We chat with the director about his debut feature and the cinematic and comic book adaptations that fuel it. Akira!
Welcome to our Creator Corner, our reoccurring interview series, where we chat with the coolest and most thought-provoking creators in the industry. In this entry, we're conversing with director Andrew Cumming about Out of Darkness. Listen to the unedited audio HERE.
You ever watch a movie or read a comic book, and afterward, you're like, "I gotta make my own damn movie"? Out of Darkness is that kind of flick. It's the debut feature from director Andrew Cumming, and it left me chomping at the bit. The film is sharp, focused, and told with a clarity that's intimidating but not un-approachable. I may not have the talent to execute something so well-defined, but it encourages me to try.
Set 45,000 years ago, the film follows a Stone Age cadre as they attempt to navigate a hostile environment haunted by a mysterious and deadly presence. Whenever anyone puts a microphone before Cumming, the Ridley Scott sci-fi horror classic Alien gets mentioned sooner or later. Our conversation is no different, but we dig deeper into that influence.
I first caught the movie at last year's Fantastic Fest film festival when it was still called The Origin. Immediately, I was struck by the movie's design. The costumes, the framing, the performances, the production. Here was a filmmaker who'd read a few comic books. Moebius, we got to talk Moebius. Surprisingly, however, our conversation begins with Akira. Now, that was a treat.
Out of Darkness opens nationwide this Friday, February 9th. It is absolutely a movie you want to see on a big screen and in the darkest theater possible. It creeps, it jolts, and it will latch onto you and ride back with you to your dark bedroom at home. Good luck with the sleeping afterward.
Andrew Cumming, Out of Darkness, and Comic Books
Brad: The first thing I need to talk to you about is that Akira poster behind you.
Andrew Cumming: Yeah, it's an original Japanese theatrical. I got it as a gift from the producer of the film for my birthday. I convinced my dad to buy me it on VHS when I was eleven because he just thought it was some dumb Disney movie, and it just changed my entire life, so there you go.
Brad: Is that true? Is that a movie that you think had a big effect on your imagination?
Andrew Cumming: Huge. I'd never seen anything like that before and probably saw it too young, considering some of the themes, but just in terms of the vision and the scale. Also, it's hard. It's a conversation. It's a story about two best friends and the jealousies and the bitterness and the rivalries that can pop up in that relationship, but just with crazy superpowers. Yeah, and one of the most iconic vehicles of all time, the score is incredible. What's not to like? Yeah, it's great.
Brad: We're both '90s kids, so I'm sure we saw Akira around the same time, both probably too young to see it. It had a big effect on me, too, and when I was watching Out of Darkness -- I caught it the first time at Fantastic Fest, when it was called "The Origin." When I watched it then, it noticed a very graphic sensibility. You can see European comics in that film. I know you're a big Alien fan, and of course, Moebius had a tremendous influence on that film. Can you talk a little bit about your own design sense?
Andrew Cumming: I went to art college, and I could draw as a kid, so I used to do my own comic books. Not to the standard of Moebius or anyone like that, but I was always thinking about storytelling visually, so I think that training and just how you illustrate a frame and compose a frame, even at the age of 12, 13, you're still working out, what does a mid shot mean and what does a closeup mean? But without the thought process really behind it. It's just subliminal, what you're taking in from television.
I think when it comes to the design, specifically Out of Darkness, which I now need to get used to calling it -- you route it to the reality of the situation. I'm sure it was the same on Akira, "Okay, some sort of nuclear blast happened in Tokyo. What does the aftermath of that look like?" And you just follow that road.
If you decide you're going to make a prehistoric horror movie, okay, where do we start? Start with the research and then just work out what the characters are and how they spend their time. Would they tailor their clothes? Yes, of course, they would. Nobody in their right mind would walk around the Scottish Highlands with bare legs. Over time, you develop the look of the film based on what the story requires. Yeah, I don't know if that answers the question, but that's just how I would approach it.
Andrew Cumming, Out of Darkness, and the Pandemic
Brad: It does, but I would like to drill into the design a little bit more, especially regarding the creature. Without spoiling anything, it's the presence that's on the fringes of this film, haunting these characters. Again, you're an Alien fan; you're a Predator fan. Can you talk about realizing that particular element of this film?
Andrew Cumming: Yeah. Again, without giving spoilers away. When you're in this time period, you're thinking about necessity and what is at hand to craft this thing. It's very difficult to talk about without giving away spoilers.
Brad: I know, I know.
Andrew Cumming: For example, we know that people around that time period were plucking feathers from their kills based on cuts in the bones of certain birds, such as crows, for example. People were using feathers, but we don't know what for. Was it for adornment? Was it for insulation? We don't know. You take that as an interesting detail and go, "Okay, so if we're making this monster, what if we make it quite birdlike and have this headdress with these feathers? Then if you sculpt it in such a way that it looks quite aerodynamic and has a more powerful neck, because of it, then it just looks more beastly and more demonic." Then you're playing that trek of, how much do you show it? Because you only really want to show it when you're going to tell the audience where the shift is coming.
It was about giving the impression of something other and just then keeping it in the shadows, so that the homosapiens, ie, the audience, can imagine what they want to when they see just these flickers of it in the forest or when it's making noises in the dark. You can make that subjectively larger and louder and feel more powerful and omnipotent than it actually is.
Brad: My understanding is that you wrote the screenplay pre-pandemic, and then you made the movie in a much different world. How did that shift affect your understanding of the film itself?
Andrew Cumming: In terms of what's on the screen, not a lot, but the most bittersweet irony is that the pandemic probably helped the film get made, because when the world shut down and when this industry shut down, there was a real dearth of content. That's not a great word, but it'll do. I think six people cast up a mountain in Scotland was a safe bet among the safest bets you could make at that time. We were actually one of the first productions to go back to Scotland, so we were one of the guinea pigs. I think, actually, in terms of the feeling of isolation and of being in a hotel in the northwest of Scotland and creating a COVID bubble, so we could all be safe and work effectively, nobody gets to see their family, nobody gets to go home at the weekends, no one gets to visit, so it does become this...
It's almost like you're a traveling circus troop, and you're just there. You go to bed at night, you wake up the next morning, everybody's together, you eat breakfast, you go do this crazy thing, this crazy creative endeavor, and then rinse and repeat for six weeks. I don't think COVID necessarily impacted the creative element, sorry, on the visuals or anything, but in terms of the workflow and the level of focus we had from everybody, because there was no alternative, I don't know if I'll ever get that again. That was a gift.
Brad: Has your view of humanity shifted at all in these last few years, though?
Andrew Cumming: Has it? Out of Darkness had a pretty pessimistic premise to begin with, because it was written at a time when there was a lot of flux, and whatever was happening over the other side of the Atlantic on your side, politically and socioeconomically, we were dealing with Brexit and the rhetoric around that and how ugly that got. We're still dealing with the side effects of that. I think, if anything, COVID, especially in the early days when everyone was panicking, and no one knew what was going on, and everybody put their arms around their own and said, "I'm going to take all the toilet paper and all the tomato sauce and all the pasta, all the dry pasta, it's mine," I was nodding my head and going, "Yeah, okay. We've not crossed to the other side yet in terms of being nicer to each other." I think that comes later, but the initial instinct to just seize control and hold onto what's yours, that hasn't changed.
Brad: My interpretation of the movie is that it's a question, "What's wrong with us?"
Andrew Cumming: Basically, and, "Can we change? Is this just what we do forever?"
Brad: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't know how I interpret the ending of the movie. Is it a hopeful conclusion? Are we feeling better about humanity, or is it just part of the cycle?
Andrew Cumming: Again, if people want to go and see it, then don't listen any longer, but the last line of the film, she says, "We try again. We try again." It's like that [Samuel] Beckett quote, "Fail again, fail better." Yeah, you just hope that, one day, things are going to click into place and there won't be another situation that we have in the Ukraine, there won't be another situation that we have in Gaza and Israel, but when people are afraid, when people demonize others, you can justify the most heinous acts of cruelty and violence. You can see that throughout our history. I think the film has hope, but it's checkered by the fact that these events happened 45,000 years ago, and we know what we've got ahead of us. That's the knowledge that the audience have. Beyah [Safia Oakley-Green] has retained some kernel of hope, but we know how her life's going to go once Heron [Luna Mwezi], the boy, grows up.
Andrew Cumming, Out of Darkness, and What Would Ridley Scott Do?
Brad: I want to do a little bit of a U-turn before I get out of here. Going back to your influences and going back to Alien. I heard that one of the things you would say on set is, "What would Ridley Scott do in this moment?" When you would ask that question, what was the answer? What would Ridley do in Out of Darkness?
Andrew Cumming: Probably put another two cameras on it, by the sense of Napoleon. It's like asking, "What would Kurosawa do?" Or, "What would Fincher do?" Or, "What would John Ford do?" When you're framing individuals in huge spaces, these are the filmmakers that I think of. Malick as well, although very different sensibility there. Just thinking of how you frame people in space, how you use the elements to your advantage, how you create mood and atmosphere through lighting and through camera movement. The actors are important, of course, and you rely so much on their performances to tell the story, but they're not the only part. You've also got these other tools at your disposal. Yeah, Alien was a huge influence on myself, Oliver Kassman, and Ruth Greenberg, the writers. The story structure is such a strong template to follow, and then, obviously, you add your own touches, whether it's prehistory or whatever.
Brad: Let me ask the question in a different way. What did Ridley do on Alien that was so effective that inspired you?
Andrew Cumming: You know what? He made it feel real. Everybody talks about the truckers in space thing, right? But Star Beast, as it was originally going to be called, even that title alone, so schlocky. It could have just been this really cheap and cheesy thing, but he storyboarded the entire movie and I think doubled the budget just based on his storyboards. I think the thing that Ridley brought was a vision and took it very seriously. Maybe more seriously than Dan O'Bannon and... Is it David Giler?
Brad: Yeah.
Andrew Cumming: Maybe took it more seriously than they did. The thing I say about Alien is it was the first time, as a young person watching the film, thinking, "I see what the director has in their toolkit. I can see the performance, but it's the set design, it's the sound, it's the music, it's lighting." Like I say, how the camera moves, when it moves, when it doesn't. When is it handheld? When is it on the dolly? When does he just go batshit crazy and let the strobe lighting go at the end? When do you have a jump scare, and when do you hold it? Yeah, that was the film where I feel like the curtain got pulled back, and I could see The Wizard of Oz and see the machine behind it, but it didn't stop my enjoyment watching it. You're just watching a guy who is wringing every ounce of that concept and trying to put it on screen. It's really inspiring.
Brad: You've put a lot of yourself on screen with this movie; how do you get beyond such a debut?
Andrew Cumming: Good question. You just hope that the shadowy figures that control this industry will give you another shot, right? I think, as well, I want to stay loose. I've been sent a few horror things that haven't grabbed me the way that Out of Darkness did, so I'm waiting for that moment, but if it doesn't come, there's a few things I'm developing that aren't necessarily in the horror space, but they still look at the cynical side, the dark side of humanity, but just in different genres. That's it; I just want to stay fast and loose and, hopefully, keep getting the opportunity to learn my craft. That's the thing. You make a debut, but it doesn't mean you've made it. You've got a long way to go, a long way to go.
Out of Darkness opens nationwide 2/9.