Damien Power Interview: No Exit | Screen Rant
Hulu's growing library of original films expands with the release of thriller No Exit. The movie stars newcomer Havana Rose Liu as Darby, who finds an abducted girl locked in a van in a parking lot while she's stranded at a rest stop. What follows is a terrifying series of events as Darby tries to uncover who the kidnapper is and save the girl. No Exit is directed by Damien Power, who also helmed Killing Ground.
Screen Rant spoke with Power about his experience making No Exit, working with the talented cast, and much more.
Screen Rant: I keep saying this movie rocked, I had so much fun with it from start to finish, I was just completely enthralled the entire time. How quickly were you in on directing this one?
Damien Power: I knew that I wanted to do it as soon as I'd read the script that my agent sent me, and as soon as I finished that, I picked up the novel, read that in one sitting, and thought, "I must do this." So as far as I was concerned, I was in. But then, of course, I had to pitch to the studio.
The ensemble cast is phenomenal. Can you talk about how the cast came together?
Damien Power: It was such a pleasure to cast this tight ensemble because it is so contained. We're with these characters for so long. We're in such close quarters with them. I think maybe Havana [Rose Liu] was the first person I cast through an audition process. I remember seeing her, having a callback, talking to her and working with her, and just thinking, "It has to be her." I'm just so grateful that producers Scott Frank and the studio felt the same. I had always imagined Dale [Dickey] and Dennis [Haysbert] in those roles and just felt so lucky that they said, "Yes." Then, I found Danny [Ramirez] and David [Rysdahl] and Mila [Harris] through an audition process, and right away with each of those guys, I felt that there was something special. I could really see them in that story. When I Zoomed with David, he had the Lars look and was so deep in that character I thought, "This is just how I imagined that guy." And of course, David is nothing like that character. He's a very good actor. I'm so grateful that everything came together in the way that it did.
Diving into Havana a little bit because she is such a star. What was her audition like? The moment you were like, "Yep. That's her."
Damien Power: Pretty much from the beginning. She had great Darby energy. She felt raw and real. Darby as a character has to do some badass things, but she is not a badass character. She is vulnerable and afraid a lot of the time, and not making the right decisions, and really just kind of making it up as she goes along. That's the kind of character that I can relate to. Havana was really able to tap into that, but she was also an incredibly committed and dedicated actor. When we were on the ground, working on it together, we sat down and we went through the script, every single line, and we're talking about what it meant, how it worked, who her character was. I think we even filmed a 30-minute-long interview with Darby as a character, talking about her life and her story, which I think we both found was incredibly useful and something that I would seriously consider doing again, in terms of allowing her to sink into that character.
There's a scene, I don't want to give anything away, but there's something with a nail gun that happens. Is that in the book? How did you guys come up with that? That ruined my life.
Damien Power: Yeah, there is a nail gun in the book. That scene does not play out like it does in the book. Actually, in the book, it is more violent. That is one instance where I thought, "I don't know that I want to do that. But I think that there's an element that's already in the novel in the story that we can use in a much more interesting way."
When you're making a thriller, is there an audience reaction that you look for where you're like, "Oh, this is how I know I got it right?"
Damien Power: Yeah. It's getting people to the edge of their seats and just kind of staying there. This film was audience-tested in a cinema in Arizona, and we had one of those little night-vision cameras up front so that we could watch people's reactions, and it was fantastic. People were gasping and you could feel the audience just kind of come together and focus deeply, and see the conversations between people as some of the reveals happen. Because I think, unusually for a suspense thriller, this does have a few reveals and twists that you don't see coming. To see those land and to see people either go, "Yeah, I saw that" to their boyfriend or girlfriend or be genuinely shocked, it was so much fun.
Yeah, I keep saying it's a whodunnit-meets-thriller, and they all shocked me.
What was your biggest challenge in making this film?
Damien Power: I think one of the biggest challenges was, we shot the whole thing in a studio in Oakland because nobody really wanted to be on the side of a mountain in a blizzard at nighttime when shooting, which was great. It was fantastic. We were able to build a space, to build the visitor center and the car park, and some of the woods. David talks about it being a bloody snow globe, but it did feel like this space we could go and play. I personally find some of the violence the hardest stuff to film, because you want a certain level of intensity and you're asking actors to go to this place. But the cast was great. It really felt like a family on set, and very supportive and generous with each other. Sometimes, it is just as hard to be the perpetrator as the victim in those circumstances. I took a lot of care to make sure that that was a safe space for those actors, and they really went for it. So I think that's the hardest. Technically, there are always challenges with some of the bigger action scenes and set pieces. But we had a fantastic crew. The everyday challenge was probably our snow machines.
Oh, were they like the Jaws shark?
Damien Power: Yeah, no. I mean, they were great. At the end of the day, there is a lot of digital snow in those frames. But it would be just trying to get that balance of onset snow right without hosing someone in a snow tornado.