Raquel Laguna/ SUCOPRESS. David Yarovesky directs Bill Skarsgård and Anthony Hopkins in the movie LOCKED. In this interview, David talks about working with both actors, and about the challenges he had while filming in a confined space like a car. From producer Sam Raimi (Evil Dead, Drag Me to Hell) comes a relentless horror-thriller where luxury becomes deadly. When Eddie (Bill Skarsgård) breaks into a luxury SUV, he steps into a deadly trap set by William (Anthony Hopkins), a self-proclaimed vigilante delivering his own brand of twisted justice. With no means of escape, Eddie must fight to survive in a ride where escape is an illusion, survival is a nightmare, and justice shifts into high gear. LOCKED is based on the Argentinian film 4 x 4 by Mariano Cohn. The film, now on theaters.
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00:00There was something really compelling in the script. I had just done a movie with Sam Raimi called Nightbooks, and we had a really great working relationship. He sent me the script. I read it immediately because I would do anything to work again with Sam Raimi because he was an idol of mine growing up.
00:19I started reading the script, and I was just pulled in immediately. I read a lot of scripts, and Michael Ross, who wrote the script, just did an incredible job really pulling me in.
00:34I was like, oh wow, here's a movie that's so tense, and the characters are so rich, and here's a villain. I'm always drawn to villains with depth that you understand the way their mind works, and you can kind of get on their side a little, or you can understand where they're coming from.
01:04The script just had so much when I read it, and it also felt like an incredibly tough challenge. When I first spoke to Sam about the movie after reading the script, he asked me, are you concerned at all about keeping it interesting when he's stuck in the car the whole time?
01:28My answer was yes. That was my whole answer.
01:34But what I saw was an opportunity to do something different. One of the genre tropes in the space, guy-in-a-box space, is very common because you're in such a claustrophobic setting physically that you can't shoot it cinematically.
01:55It ties your hands. You can put a camera here, and here, and here. These are the only spots. But I didn't want to be bound by that, so we did a lot to break that trope and make something that was incredibly cinematic and visually exciting, and to shoot inside of a car in ways that no one has ever really done before.
02:16The movie's about a darkness within us all. It's a moral conversation about how can we get along when some of us have so much and some of us have so little, and how are we supposed to live in the same area, the same confined space?
02:36Taking a guy like Anthony Hopkins, who's just played some of the most iconic villains of all time, and he's of a generation, and taking Bill, who's now also playing some of the most iconic villains of all time, but he's of this generation, you put two, an antihero and a villain against each other.
03:03When the two of them met for the first time, I really didn't want them to have any relationship outside of the movie. I wanted them to not meet until the day we were shooting.
03:14We had done rehearsals. Bill and I pulled up under a bridge during the rain, and Anthony Hopkins called in, and we did the movie as a play in the car together with him over the Bluetooth.
03:32The first time they met in person, the two of them, I've never seen anything quite like it. They just locked onto each other, and they stood in front of each other, just grinning, but eyeing each other down.
03:47I'm a big fan of boxing, and it felt like a way in at boxing, where the two of them were just standing there, staring each other down like it was about to be a cage match. I think with total respect and admiration, but it was like, we're going to go play against each other right now.
04:03They just locked in, and they got in the car, and very quickly, we were shooting after that. I think some of the stuff we shot with them on that day was just absolute magic. I think we really captured lightning in a bottle in that sequence.
04:19It's a morality tale. At its core, you could say that Eddie's a guy who, at the start of the movie, thinks that what he needs is a couple hundred bucks to fix his car, but what he really needs is a better relationship with his daughter.
04:37Certainly, he has to go to hell and back to learn that about himself. I think that's at the center of his arc, and his story, and his character. I guess I could talk about that a little bit, but I really like it. I like people to watch a movie and take from it what they want to. I don't like giving it to people.