Written and directed by Brooklyn Nine-Nine's Joe Lo Truglio, Outpost is currently available to see in theaters and stream On Demand. The psychological horror centers around a woman who takes a job at an outpost in the mountains to escape her abusive relationship. While she believes the change will bring her a sense of peace, the isolation sends Kate on a dangerous downward spiral that threatens the safety of herself and those around her.
Outpost is Lo Truglio's directional debut and stars his real-life partner, Beth Dover. Dover has been featured in several films and television series such as Another Period, American Housewife, and The Oath. However, she is most well-known for her role as Linda Ferguson in Orange is the New Black. Ato Essandoh, Dylan Baker, Becky Ann Baker, Dallas Roberts, Ta'Rea Campbell, Tim Neff, and D.R. Anderson also star.
Joe Lo Truglio and Beth Dover spoke exclusively with Screen Rant about Truglio's directional debut, working together to create the horror film, and hopes for a Brooklyn Nine-Nine reunion.
Joe Lo Truglio & Beth Dover Talk Outpost
Screen Rant: Joe, congratulations on your directional debut! How has this experience been?
Joe Lo Truglio: It's been amazing. This has been a childhood dream for a while. I've been a horror fan since I was a kid. That's kind of what got me interested in movies and making movies—then I found comedy. This is kind of a return to an original love. This project is about five years in the making. I'm so happy that people can finally see it. I had an incredible crew. Beth is great in it. It's just been an overwhelming experience and quite a learning experience, as well.
You are very well-known for your work in comedy and horror is such a different space. It sounds like this is a genre that you’ve always wanted to be creatively involved in.
Joe Lo Truglio: For sure. Yeah. As a kid, I'd read Stephen King and collect Fangoria magazines, and these were big publications that really revolved around horror movies and monster movies and special makeup effects. This was always something that I've wanted to do and love and still love.
Beth Dover: Tell her about how if there was a fire when you were a kid and you got to keep something...
Joe Lo Truglio: Oh! [Laughs] Yeah. As I said, I was big Stephen King fan. I collected all his books, hardcover books, and because I loved him so much and wanted to protect them so much—I put them in a big box that I kept underneath my bed, in the event that if I had to leave quickly because of a fire or some natural disaster, I can just quickly grab the box and save the books.
Beth Dover: So his emergency kit had nothing to do with a radio or like a fire starter. Just the Stephen King books.
Joe Lo Truglio: I had the books. If something happened, I would be able to read them without a house.
Here's a question then—if you could be involved in any Stephen King production, which would it be?
Joe Lo Truglio: Oh, wow. That's a really good one. I'm going to go a little obscure for this one, but there was a short story called The Jaunt, which was about teleportation, and the things that can go wrong with teleportation. I don't know if you would be able to develop that into a feature, but that was a short story that always stuck with me. So maybe that one.
Was this always intended to be a project for you both to work on together? Was the role of Kate created specifically for Beth?
Joe Lo Truglio: Yes. The way it came to be is that I had written some other scripts before Outpost. They were a little bit too big and a little bit too expensive. I was realizing that we were going to have to finance whatever low-budget movie we were going to do. And so that meant that the story had to be smaller, and the cast had to be smaller. And if we're financing, it was going to be in the household for quite a long time, and I wanted Beth to be part of that. And also, she's an incredible actor. It wasn't just because of that reason.
Beth Dover: But it does help!
Joe Lo Truglio: It does help. And so in that respect, yes, it very much was written with Beth in mind. I know a lot of the type of acting skills that she has that maybe not many people have seen, and I knew that this was a role that she would really sing in. So it began there, and then it was like, "Where can we go for a little bit of money and make it look amazing?" And I thought the summit of a mountain would be incredible. I wasn't really thinking about how hard it would be to make a movie on top of the mountain, but once I had an idea of where I wanted to shoot it, I started thinking of the story. And so that's how the story of Outpost started to materialize.
I wanted to ask you about that because the scenery is beautiful. Where in the mountains was this actually filmed?
Joe Lo Truglio: We shot on the panhandle of Idaho, which is northern Idaho, about 30 miles south of the Canadian border. We were really up there. We shot in the summer of 2021, and we shot for sixteen days. Eight of those sixteen days were at that tower on the mountain, which is 6,300 feet up in the air. It took an hour for us to drive up the mountain and an hour to drive down, so we would lose two hours of shooting every day. But we did it! We had an incredible crew and an incredible community there in Priest Lake, Idaho, that it wouldn't have been possible without.
Beth Dover: And it's a testament to people who love Joe, because it's a lot of his friends that he's known for years that are actors in the movie.
Joe Lo Truglio: I pulled a lot of favors. [Laughs]
Beth Dover: You engender goodwill. So it was great, and it became a really fantastic bonding experience for everybody. We had a really good time shooting it.
Beth, as Joe was saying before, this seemed like such a challenging role, and you really brought it. How did this compare to other projects you’ve worked on in terms of the physical and emotional intensity required?
Beth Dover: It was a very different challenge than I'm normally undertaking, but it was so awesome—so much fun. Physically, we were up on that [outpost] and there are some fight sequences, and the tower kind of sways in the wind a little bit, and it's very high up. I think, for me, the most challenging part was getting over my fear of heights, to be honest with you. But it was a challenge in all kinds of ways because I'm mainly a comedic actor. It was fantastic to get to use some different muscles there, and it's very cathartic. I got to scream and run around, and it was fantastic. It was very, very fun to do.
I know you had the crew up there with you, but did you guys go a little stir-crazy yourselves?
Beth Dover: We were working so much it was impossible to even think about being stir-crazy. We were shooting the whole time, basically. We had one day off.
Joe Lo Truglio: We were shooting six days a week, so we had one day a week off. The tower had its limitations on capacity and how many people we were allowed to put up there. It's a working fire tower in Idaho, and so we were only able to have about five people up at the top there. The rest of the crew was down at the bottom or at a landing just underneath. And that was how it was on the set. And then, off the set, I thought it would be most productive if both Beth and I had separate rooms at the hotel, so we could decompress. I have a different role as director than she had as an actor, and I'm going to be up a little bit later. It's also good to have that space and approach the project—obviously, we're husband and wife, but I think you need to approach the project as a director and an actor to really be most productive.
Joe, isolation and the effect it can have on a person is the horror of the film, so what made you choose that as a theme?
Joe Lo Truglio: The horror movies that I've really responded to, and some of my favorites, revolve around descents into madness, and paranoia, and breaking down a trauma that starts to distort reality for the main character and starts to bring out some type of monster or demon in the character. I was always drawn to stories like that. That's where it started. There were certain classic movies that Outpost certainly owes its influence to like The Shining, Repulsion, and a handful of others that Outpost gives a nod to. That's where it came from, really.
We know that Kate was in an abusive relationship, which is what pushes her to get away from the world and take this position at the outpost. We see flashes, but did you and Joe talk more about her backstory and that trauma?
Beth Dover: Absolutely. It's a sensitive topic to discuss, and we wanted to make sure that we did it justice. We did research and just talked about triggers and being alone and [Joe] read The Body Keeps the Score. All these types of things were infused into Kate's backstory.
Joe Lo Truglio: There's a lot more there. It's a sensitive subject matter, but in terms of the character, I wanted a character that was coming from a troubled past—a past of neglect. She didn't have the tools to take care of herself in the right way. I thought it was important that it was established that there were other characters in the movie urging her to seek professional help, and our character makes a poor choice to isolate herself. I think there's a danger in that in general. The idea of PTSD is a very real one. It affects about 8 million Americans every year. It's a real condition, and it's something that I hope the movie respectfully addressed and shows the urgency of taking care of yourself with help, and that you don't have to do it alone, and more so, you can't really do it alone.
You touched on this earlier when you said you turned to some friends from previous projects. Did you reach out to any directors for advice?
Joe Lo Truglio: I'm fortunate enough to have a lot of talented actor, writer, and director friends. Certainly, the actors I knew, I wanted to go to. Everyone in the movie, with the exception of Ato, who's amazing, who I'm now very good friends with, I had known for at least 10 years—all the main actors. As far as the other directors, absolutely. Once I had a first cut, I was showing it to many people like my cast of Brooklyn—Andy, Melissa, Stephanie. I have a lot of other friends—David Wayne, Ken Marino, Michael Jann—these are other film directors whose opinions I respect, and they really helped with the notes and honing the movie down to a better place.
Do either of you have any other upcoming projects you’re working on?
Beth Dover: On the acting side, there's a movie that just came out called The Donor Party with Malin Åkerman. That's out right now. There's a movie called Helen's Dead that I think should be coming out fairly shortly, and obviously, Outpost. So those are some indie films out right now for me.
Joe Lo Truglio: For me, actually, nothing coming out immediately. A lot of it has been devoted to Outpost and the release of this. But I'm hoping that there are some projects next year, that I can't announce yet, that I hope will come to fruition. And then, of course, trying to get the next horror script produced and out there that I have ready to go too. So fingers crossed!
Joe, do you and the Brooklyn Nine-Nine cast ever talk about doing a reunion one day?
Joe Lo Truglio: I'm sure that at some point, we'll be doing something like that. It was such an incredible experience for all of us. We miss it, and we were lucky that it was received on such an incredibly generous level. There's no official word, and this isn't even close to a tease. There's no word. But I'm pretty confident that, eventually, we'll do something down the road. I hope so anyway.
Beth Dover: It's a cast that really likes each other.
Joe Lo Truglio: Exactly. So I see us working together again, at some point.
About Outpost
After a violent assault, a woman asks her best friend for help escaping an abusive ex. She’s given a job as a fire lookout in the mountains of northern Idaho, hoping the peaceful solitude will heal her trauma. But the PTSD and isolation have other plans, and it’s suddenly a fight to save herself and the town.
Outpost is currently available in theaters and On Demand.