The Direct sat down with director David Yarovesky to discuss his new movie Locked.
Locked is an upcoming claustrophobic thriller directed by Yarovesky, known for Brightburn and Nightbooks. The film stars Bill Skarsgård as a young thief trapped inside a vehicle and Anthony Hopkins as a mysterious figure connected to his ordeal.
It is an English-language remake of the 2019 Argentinian film 4x4 and was produced by Sam Raimi. Locked is set for a wide theatrical release on March 21, 2025.
David Yarovesky on the Key Influences for Locked
- The Direct: "What were the main influences for Locked, other than the Argentinian film (4x4) that it's based on?"
David Yarovesky: I happen to be a a really big fan of when someone's doing a remake for them to do something that to to take it in a completely different direction. I really like to hear or feel the voice of the filmmaker and an example of this is 'The Fly' or 'The Thing' ... there's been a number of remakes where you really it's not we're not retelling the same story. We're telling something very different.
So I was influenced by movies like that that had this sort of like boldness to to sort of go in its own direction. And then and then there's obviously influence from stuff like 'Phone Booth' and classic 'trapped-in-a-place' movies. But additionally, I always felt like it had a connection to these movies from the '70 movies... that were gritty and sort of seedy and crime oriented. There's a sort of untapped genre out there, car exploitation movies.
I drew one other kind of influence... I really wanted there to be a sense of realism with this. I feel like I've seen movies with someone trapped somewhere and trying to get out many times, but they're always so heightened... I really wanted this to be as grounded as possible. I thought that if I could tell this as realistically as possible, what would happen if someone one day decided to build a trap car?
Bill Skarsgard's Incredible Performance
- The Direct: "What kind of performance can audiences expect from Bill Skarsgård as Eddie in Locked, given his transformative roles like Pennywise and Nosferatu?"
David Yarovesky: I think he completely vanishes into this one as well, to be completely honest. I think that when you put on a lot of makeup and you are unrecognizable visually - I think that stuff's amazing - but I think this was Bill as a movie star.
I think that this is one of Bill's greatest performances. I was blown away working with him. I think he took the role into places that I couldn't even imagine when writing it, and and I think he carries the movie. I think he's emotionally honest. I think he's raw. I think he's believable the whole time. I think the movie's tense because you believe he's tense, and you're so in his perspective.
When I show my friends the movie, I've tested the movie, the first thing people say to me is, 'Man, Bill is incredible.' And he is. I mean, you get to the end of this, you're like, 'That guy's a movie star!'
The Challenge of Filming Inside One Car for Locked
- The Direct: "What were the biggest challenges and triumphs of filming the claustrophobic, close-up shots in Locked, especially the near one-take Steadicam sequence?"
David Yarovesky: So one of the things one of the genre tropes of making a, 'Hey, here's someone stuck in some place kinda' movie, a claustrophobic movie, is that the cinematography is often very basic. Because you're trapped in a space, you're limited by your tools.
But I didn't wanna be limited on this, and I wanted the cinematography to be spectacular in this movie. So we did a number of things to pull that off.
For example, the shot that you just referenced, we built the version of the car that sits on the soundstage. That version pulls apart in eight or 10 places and they're on rails. Our production designer was an art director on 'Gravity,' and they did something similar for 'Gravity' where you could slide parts of the set away in a very smooth way and then slide it right back in.
For this one, they he sort of developed a locking mechanism so that Bill could kick against a wall, something they didn't really need to do in 'Gravity.' So he could smash into the wall and it could feel sturdy. And then as the camera moves away, we can slide the wall right out.
So that oner that you're seeing [in 'Locked'] is literally teams of people sliding segments of the car out of the way as the camera's coming through and rotating again and again and again.
I wanted the movie to be cinematic. I wanted it to be anamorphic...So we had to have Dan Sasaki at Panavision design custom lenses. He built me the widest lens, widest anamorphic lens I think they had, and he designed me a couple different lenses, some crazy lenses. And then he blunt forced the lenses, which allowed me to focus them almost to the glass on the front of the lens. So I could put Bill's nose millimeters from the lens and focus on him.
Deeper Meanings Explained in Locked
- The Direct: "Can you discuss the moral philosophy behind Anthony Hopkins' character in Locked and the deeper reasoning behind trapping Eddie, beyond the film’s central survival theme?"
David Yarovesky: I think this movie is a conversation about how we all live together when some people have so much and some people have so little.
We shot it in Vancouver, on Hastings Street...it's a tough place to shoot. I don't know if you're familiar with Hastings Street, but it's sort of [compared] to Skid Row in Los Angeles in a way.
It's basically where their drug epidemic up there exists, and it's really rough. But what's unique about Hastings Street is it's in Gastown in Vancouver, which is sort of the hippest and coolest area in many ways.
So there are these foodie restaurants that you would pay a lot of money to eat at and in the front of the store, there's people dying or getting high. It was an example of the most extreme version that I could really find of the wealthiest people and the poorest people sort of living together.
I wanted that to be the backdrop of the movie because it just embodied sort of what the conversation of the movie was about...It's a moral movie. It's a conversation about that, about how can we get along and how we communicate with each other when both sides just absolutely hate each other.
Locked hits theaters on March 21, 2025.
