Brooklyn Nine-Nine might be what Joe Lo Truglio is best known for, but with his feature directorial debut Outpost, he knew he might be surprising long-term fans of the show eager to see what he's doing next.
Joining a rich tradition of comedy actors venturing into horror (in recent years, see the likes of Jordan Peele, Zoe Lister-Jones and John Krasinski to name but a few), Lo Truglio's new movie is unashamedly a straight-up horror.
And while he loves that people might be shocked, he wants it to be clear from the get-go that this is not a comedy-horror.
"None of us are all one thing, right? I hope that people forgive me for jumping outside the lane for a bit. I try to be, in the promotion of the movie, very straightforward, in saying, look, there's no wink in this movie. It's a very earnest horror movie. Please don't come expecting the jokes," he tells Digital Spy.
"Some may find it funny, because some parts of it may not work for them – but that's a separate conversation. This is a very earnest horror movie, and I'm excited for people to take a look and hopefully embrace."
Ahead of Outpost's digital release in the UK today (September 11), Digital Spy sat down with Joe Lo Truglio to talk about working with his wife Beth Dover, why he didn't want to act in it, his horror background and whether he would venture back into the comedy genre.
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Outpost is your feature directorial debut, but you had directed before with Brooklyn Nine-Nine episode 'The Bimbo'. Were there any particular lessons you could take from that experience for the movie, or are they just completely different beasts?
They're quite different beasts because with television directing, the visual language for the show is often already set by the creators and earlier directors. As a television director, you're coming in and just fulfilling the purpose of coverage.
You're adding a little bit of your flair, but the language and style is already built into the show. With any movie, the director obviously then has a lot more leeway to create the world, visually and sound-wise, that he wants to create.
Certainly, my work on Brooklyn as a director helped with the massive undertaking of doing a feature. Because, really, what you learn is preparation is about 95% of being able to successfully shoot a movie – an independent movie, or any movie.
Because something will go wrong, and you have to kind of be ready to shift, and go to plan B, C, D, or maybe up to K. In that respect, the fast-paced nature of shooting television definitely helped with Outpost. We shot Outpost in 16 days, so we were under the gun.
Was directing a movie something you were always planning to go to in your career, or did it end up being kind of the right place at the right time?
I had wanted to direct a movie since I was quite young, specifically a horror movie. I was pretty obsessed with all the horror movies of the '70s and the '80s, and read a lot of Stephen King, and shot home movies that were horror movies.
So, this was brewing for quite some time. And then, as you say, it was the right place at the right time. I'd saved up a bit of money. I had a window of opportunity to shoot a movie in the summer, and so it was a bit of both.
You wrote and produced Outpost, as well as directing it. That's enough already on your plate, but was there ever a thought that you'd act in it as well?
Immediately, I was like, "I don't want to be in this. I want to devote my entire energy to the writing and directing." Because when I did do Brooklyn Nine-Nine, I did not like having to act and direct, and do the same.
That was something I did learn, to get back to your earlier question. I didn't enjoy doing that because they're two different things.
You're an actor, and your whole thing is just to react. You're not supposed to be outside of it. You're right there. And when you're directing, it's kind of the opposite. You're watching the whole screen, and you're seeing what needs to change, and what doesn't.
You had written this with your wife Beth in mind for the lead role, so did she read drafts of the script along the way?
I asked Beth after I did a first draft or second draft if she wanted to read it and give notes. She didn't really want to. She knew the story, and I would ask her about some scenes, but she really wanted to kind of leave that to me.
Beth's contribution really revealed itself on set when she was really able to make some moments breathe, or change some dialogue, or change some direction in order for it to be a bit more real and authentic for the female experience.
Was there ever any point when you were like, "I've gone a bit too far"? Because, without getting into spoilers, her character Kate goes through a lot in this film.
I just didn't want her to bring the third-act Kate back home, because the third-act Kate was quite severe. I always knew the range that Beth had, so I was very excited for people to see a very different side of her.
I thought she walked that line so well. I thought it was quite a challenge to give the performance that she gave, because her character goes through quite a metamorphosis. And on a performance level, she was really doing very different things at the end of the movie, that she sold very well.
You were planning to shoot in early 2020, but then the pandemic delayed production. In a weird way, did that add an extra layer to the movie as it's about Kate living in isolation and how she copes with that?
It did. One, of course, there's the theme of isolation as you mentioned. But two, everyone was so excited to be making a movie again, and that helped the energy of the entire film. And three, Frank Barrera, my DP, and I had another whole year to work on the shot list, and work on the script, and have another script reading.
So that extra year really did help us, and we had to take a year because we only had the window of July to shoot at this location. There was snow up there for the majority of the year. It wouldn't melt until the end of June and fire season really ramped up in August.
So we only had a limited window to shoot in Idaho at Sundance Mountain anyway.
In terms of isolation horrors, The Shining is the touchstone a lot of people will always reference. Was that the case for you here?
Besides The Shining, the other major influence was Repulsion because it kind of revolved around a woman whose sanity started to break, and playing with the kind of visual reality of, "Is it happening, or is it not happening?".
Really, I reverse-engineered the story which is to say that I knew it was going to be an independent movie, and we needed to get the most bang for our buck. We needed production value, so I thought a beautiful vista would be a place to start. What kind of stories would take place on top of a mountain?
So once I had that, the influences of The Shining and Repulsion really started to insert themselves into the shot list and into the themes of the movie.
Outpost is the first movie from your production company What's That Noise. What kind of projects are you looking to make as part of your company?
We want to bring in some outside voices. I think that What's That Noise starts where my childhood love of the movie began, and that's with the horror and sci-fi genre. But it will always be influenced by comedy. I think that we will eventually start making some more directly comic projects.
But a noise can be a scary noise, or it can be the noise of an ice cream truck. Our company wants to bring in projects that turn people's heads, and say, "Hey, what's going on over here? What is this thing?".
Something that kind of operates on the fringes, in the margins, with voices that often aren't heard very often.
Now that the first movie is done, could you see yourself directing a comedy in future?
For sure, absolutely. It's always tough. I want to be able to just make movies. I love making them and so the first job as a filmmaker is to make movies. The second one, which is more boring to talk about, is how do you brand yourself as a filmmaker when you're just starting out, so that audiences know what kind of movies you're going to make.
So in the beginning, I think I'm kind of indulging that little kid in me that loved horror and sci-fi. But eventually, I think that I will start to kind of veer into more traditional genres like comedy.
Outpost is available to buy or rent in the UK from Prime Video, iTunes and other digital retailers.
Movies Editor, Digital Spy Ian has more than 10 years of movies journalism experience as a writer and editor. Starting out as an intern at trade bible Screen International, he was promoted to report and analyse UK box-office results, as well as carving his own niche with horror movies, attending genre festivals around the world. After moving to Digital Spy, initially as a TV writer, he was nominated for New Digital Talent of the Year at the PPA Digital Awards. He became Movies Editor in 2019, in which role he has interviewed 100s of stars, including Chris Hemsworth, Florence Pugh, Keanu Reeves, Idris Elba and Olivia Colman, become a human encyclopedia for Marvel and appeared as an expert guest on BBC News and on-stage at MCM Comic-Con. Where he can, he continues to push his horror agenda – whether his editor likes it or not.
