Steve Pink‘s latest film, the twisty thriller “Terrestrial,” might not seem to have a lot in common with his biggest hit, the raucous 2010 comedy “Hot Tub Time Machine.” But the sci-fi-fueled trips share some DNA.
“On a very basic level, they’re not different, because you’re trying to tell a story that people will find interesting,” the director says. “People laugh because it’s surprising when you’re creating something that’s obviously funny. In this case, it’s terror. You’re creating a story with people that you know are heading in the other direction. So the anxiety and stress that’s created by the story you’re telling elicits a different response. My job is to make sure that happens.”
“Terrestrial,” which was written by Connor Diedrich and Samuel Johnson, begins with a simple idea. Allen (Jermaine Fowler) invites his college friends (including Pauline Chalamet and Edy Modica) to a weekend at his lavish Hollywood home to celebrate selling his first novel. But the friends soon become fractured because Allen’s house seems a little too good to be true, his story of success sounds a little unbelievable, and his behavior makes it seem like the aliens he writes about might be closer than we think.
To say anything more would spoil the fun of the story, which was recently awarded best screenplay at this year’s Fantasia Festival. Pink confirms that some of the biggest challenges of making the film were doling out enough information to keep the audience guessing while not spoiling surprises too early.
“It was daunting as hell,” he says. “It took me down roads of discussion that revolved around trying to discover who knows what when … What does just the audience know? What do some of the characters know? Then we reveal things to the audience that the other characters don’t know. I was always trying to make sure that we had a balance between not losing the audience, making it intriguing and propulsive, by telling just enough.”
Pink had a secret weapon in Fowler, who, although best known as a comedic presence in projects like 2021’s “Coming 2 America” and last year’s “Ricky Stanicky,” plays Allen as something of a blank slate for large swaths of the film, assuming the role of generous college friend a little too expertly.
“Anything he’s doing, you can see the wheels turning,” Pink says of Fowler. “He’s one of those actors who has something in mind that becomes surprising and funny. He just naturally has that ability. Tuning it into a psychological thriller actually was quite easy. Once I knew he had the ability to either be totally revealing or hide everything, he would just give me different takes. Sometimes we would do takes where ‘Everyone should know everything. Just lay your cards on the table emotionally. Let’s just see what it looks like when the veneer cracks.’ Then, you could do: ‘Okay, now reveal nothing.’”
Although Pink is an industry veteran, having scripted hits like 1997’s “Grosse Pointe Blank” and 2000’s “High Fidelity,” as well as directing films like the 2006 comedy “Accepted” and the 2014 romance “About Last Night,” this genre was a new direction for him creatively. And just as the characters of “Terrestrial” go through an emotional journey, Pink says making this film haunted him more than other projects.
“We had to follow these roads, down all these dark corners, and your emotional state is a lot different,” he says. “My emotions were in this contemplative, semi-anxious state the whole time. I’d keep following the characters down these roads where there was inevitable tragedy. That’s very different from comedy, where you know at the end it’s going to be some ridiculous and silly exhilaration where everything turns out okay.”
Despite that, the genre he’d most like to tackle next?
“Maybe something with some more overt horror,” Pink says. “I wouldn’t mind doing a movie that’s a lot more bloody.”
Watch the “Terrestrial” trailer below.
