What Comes Around Director Amy Redford Discusses Developing Intensity & Suspense

Summary

"What Comes Around" is an intense psychological thriller that keeps viewers guessing as the story of a young love takes a dark turn.
Director Amy Redford discusses the challenges of cutting scenes to maintain the film's pacing while highlighting the incredible performances of the talented cast.
The film explores touchy subjects such as gaslighting and the complexities of family dynamics, encouraging viewers to have compassionate conversations and consider the impact of their behavior.

What Comes Around is an intense thriller that follows a story of young love that isn't quite what it seems. When Anna meets Eric online, she falls almost instantly. It doesn't take long before he tracks her down and shows up in person to meet her. The longer the movie goes on, the longer viewers will realize that something strange is going on here. The question is, what exactly is it?

Director Amy Redford made her directorial debut with the film The Guitar, which premiered at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival. She produced Professor Marston & the Wonder Women, but as also been in front of the screen. She has acted in several films and television shows including Maid in Manhattan, This Revolution, Sunshine Cleaning, Sex and the City, and The Sopranos. Her newest movie, What Comes Around, premieres in theaters on Friday, August 4th.

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Screen Rant spoke with What Comes Around director Amy Redford about how she was able to keep the intensity high throughout the movie. She discusses the incredible cast and how they gave it their all to make the movie work as well as it does. Amy also talks about how hard it was to cut scenes to keep the pace moving along, and what it was that drew her to want to be a part of the project. Note: This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes, and What Comes Around would not exist without the labor of the writers and actors in both unions.

Amy Redford Talks What Comes Around

What Comes Around Director Amy Redford Discusses Developing Intensity & Suspense

Screen Rant: I've got to know what was it that like, initially drew you to want to be a part of this project?

Amy Redford: Oh, so many things. I mean, initially, it was really Scott Organ's play. His writing and his ability to allow people to hold multiple truths at once. He does this in all of his writing. I'm really intrigued by that. He came from an acting background and he has a deep understanding of what actors can do, and what they're capable of if you let them. So I started with that. And then, understanding some of the themes, and the events of the story were very personal to me, as well. It just kept making me want to go deeper and deeper into the process.

Screen Rant: It's a little bit of a touchy subject. Can you talk about bringing it to the screen in a away that isn't a turnoff to viewers?

Amy Redford: Yeah, no, I mean, touchy subjects are touchy. I think that we are all fallible. Whether we own this, or not, is a conversation we have to have with ourselves. I think that the like I said, the idea that we can hold multiple theories at once, and that does not mean that we need to be demonized. I think the more we have conversations where we can look at our own behavior and understand the downstream of our own behavior, the better off that people will be around us, the better off our kids will be, the better off we will be.

If you approach it with a little bit of compassion for all sides involved, I think it allows for a richer conversation, which, at this moment is important. We can get pretty binary in our conversations, and I think we're living in a much more non-binary world. Amen. I hope that's what the film ends up stimulating.

Screen Rant: This cast is pretty small, and yet they are able to really carry the movie through. Can you talk about them a little bit?

Amy Redford: Yes. I have to say that one of my producers, Jeff Hays, was the reason I got to cast actors that act. He was like, "Well, why would I interfere in this process? I wanted you to do this." And I was like, "I know, but that's like, the strangest thing." Working with Eyde Belasco, who is a great casting director, we got to do chemistry reads, and in having conversations with each one of these actors and understanding how crafted and generous they are.

Summer Phoenix was the first person that jumped into the party, and it was really her getting it going that allowed other people to jump in. Then it was people that really had a desire to dive in to the story, and to do it with the kind of nuance that they felt like it deserved. I was so grateful and so lucky to have this amazing cast. I love all of them. I wish they were here, sitting right next to me.

Screen Rant: Can you talk about building the mother-daughter relationship in such a believable way?

Amy Redford: Yes. I have three daughters. One of them is fifteen and my twins are twelve. I hope that I have a very close relationship with them. We do talk a lot, we do have a pretty deep understanding of each other and yet, there is a part of them that is going to be inaccessible to me as a mother as they reach their teenage years. You bite your nails and hope that the things that you've seeded in the past will take root and blossom and that they'll prevail with good judgment. But it is not a statement on who they are as human beings if they sometimes fall down a little bit.

I think, for me, as a mom, I'm not a perfect person. I think we are all fallible, even as parents, and our kids will see through it if you try to pretend like you have always been a perfect person and never made mistakes. There is a virtue in saying, "Hey, I did something I'm not proud of, and I need you to understand it" so that they don't carry it on their shoulders. That's what I hope to continue to stimulate with the storytelling.

Screen Rant: The pacing of the movie is done so well, but were there any scenes that you had to cut that you wish were still included?

Amy Redford: So many! It's so hard with Scott's rhetoric, and so much of his dialogue is so wonderful and innovative, and yet the pacing was everything. So my editor Emelie Mahdavian was really good. Sometimes it was a matter of frames, that would make the difference. When you realize that you also have actors that are capable of telling part of the story with efficiency you didn't anticipate. Once you get into the editing room, it takes on its own life, no matter how beautiful the scene was that you had to sacrifice. There's a lot of things that ended up being off camera that we shot, but weren't necessary to the overall themes and pacing of the film. But it's always a painful process.

Screen Rant: I'm sure it is like they are your babies, right?

Amy Redford: It is. We did put ourselves through a fair amount of rigor on this one. We did show it to test audiences. We did take our lumps when we were not delivering on what the genre wanted us to deliver on. I really did enjoy that part of it. Just to be able to have that rigor and keep going.

Screen Rant: Can you talk about building the intensity throughout the whole film up to the climax?

Amy Redford: This is a team sport. I was able to get Bobby Bukowski to shoot my film again, and I'm so grateful to have him as my teammate on this. But having the conversations with the actors initially was important. That they do have multiple truths at once and that it is their interior world that helps to build that tension, because they are always in that conversation. What you're feeling is that it is loaded, in which direction we don't know, to having time with the actors, being able to learn from their own personal lived experience is huge.

Being able to understand that light plays a big part in things like suspense. Having people, even my production designer Jonas Sappington, where we talked about how this is a well lived in home, with a lot of love, but she's outgrowing her nest, and there's dark corners. He had to deliver on that from an aesthetic point of view. It really is looking at that through all of the different parts of the filmmaking, which is tremendously fun.

Screen Rant: You've been in front of the camera before, too. What is the difference between being in front of it and behind it, and how that might have helped you with directing?

Amy Redford: Well, I get to eat carbs. I love being able to play all the parts. I step into the shoes of each one of my characters, and if I don't understand why they exist, I go back to the drawing board, and maybe there's a conversation I have with the writer or the actor. I think that it helps inform me. I also really like to create an environment onset that catalyzes that work because I know what it's like to be in an environment that doesn't. I really love being able to use the camera as a character. That part of it is really fun.

Acting is an incredible thing to do and to be able to lose yourself in that moment is tremendous. It's also can be difficult. It's difficult when you're heading into your forties and going, "Okay, now what." I started as a director when I was in High School. I studied directing. And then I went on the actor's journey. Now I'm in actoring recovery and directing.

Screen Rant: How would you describe What Comes Around for those looking for something new to catch in theaters?

Amy Redford: It is a psychological thriller, and it is family drama. It is the many genres that we all experience in the twenty-four hours of every day of our lives. My life goes through a lot of different genres and a lot of other people's do as well. It is an opportunity to explore the idea of gaslighting, and what that is, and what that means in our culture and in our homes. Hopefully this is an opportunity to look at that and experience what we might be able to do to offset the harm of some of that. The suspense makes it stay in the present. I don't think you're going to want your money back.

It is also being able to look at our kids and understand their dignity, and understand that we've handed them all of these devices. We've handed them these modes of communication, and then we judge them for it. Instead of judging them for it, perhaps maybe we need to sit down and ask them about their experience, instead of telling them what their experience is supposed to be.