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The Disappearance of Alice Creed easily could’ve been a disaster. The film mostly takes place in one location with a total of three characters. If not done right or in an over-the-top manor, it could’ve landed with a thud. The three leads are also characters that could, arguably, be labeled as nothing but despicable. Spending ninety minutes with characters you cant stand or find morally reprehensible is a turn off for most, but fine performances definitely help there.

This is film that poses more questions than it does answers. Most details are left for one’s imagination, making it all the more fun. That’s what J Blakeson wanted with Alice Creed: ambiguity. Blakeson also wants this to be a film that actually surprises you, which is a type of film we don’t get to see too often.

Check below to see what J Blakeson has to say about his directorial debut which is now available on VOD:

Note: Heavy spoilers are discussed.

To start off, how difficult was it selling the film? It’s not exactly easy to describe.

The thing was I never pitched it, but I wrote it on spec. It’s a hard one to tell people about and I’d never tell people about it, I’d just send them the script. We had a teaser line, which was basically a reference of other films and it’d say it’s a tough kidnap thriller like, Reservoir Dogs and Michael Haneke. It was just to tease people a bit and not saying specifically what it was about. In a way, I’d just say it’s a kidnap film, but even saying that is a spoiler. Even the title has a spoiler; you know she’s going to get kidnapped (laughs). So it was more a case of them just reading the script. Lots of people read it and liked it, but a lot of people turned it down. Thankfully, we got picked up.

So the material itself made it a bit harder to sell? Certain aspects are a bit risky.

Well, it’s not risky because it was quite a cheap film. You can see on the page it’s a cheap film with just three actors and it taking place in one room, most of the time. For some people it was too small and they couldn’t justify a budget. It was really hard getting financing, but right up until the moment when CinemaNX picked it up. We couldn’t get any financing, but then overnight we got one hundred percent financing. It wasn’t like I sold it to a producer and went out to try to get money for it, I sold it to a financier and then went down the road with producers making it.

A film that takes place in practically one location and with just three characters could easily be a disaster. When you started writing the script, I’m sure you knew that, but was there anything you told yourself not to do or to do to make sure it worked?

Well, my main thing was not to make it like a stage play. I wanted to keep it as visual as possible. That’s one of the reasons why there’s no dialog for the first ten minutes, I did that for two reasons. One, I wanted to show with that it wasn’t going to be a stage play and that it was going to be a film. Two, once I got three characters in one room together I was going to have to rely on dialog quite a bit. For the midsection of the film I wanted it to play out as set pieces sequences like a suspense thriller, but how do you do that when you’re basically one room? Things like having the bullet on the floor and making that into a suspense scene. And just having face offs and just constant power struggle.

In the final film there’s more dialog than there was in the script. It was never really reliant on dialog, outside a couple of scenes. It was always meant to be these sequences where everything changes in each sequence. For when the gun goes off, to when the bullet is on the floor, or for when there’s a big reveal. At the end of each sequence the whole story should keep turning on its axis. When you got no money the only real thing you have is story, and you better make sure the story works. That was my main thing and I knew I was going to have no money to make it. I knew I was going to make it in my own apartment, so the story had to be as interesting as possible (laughs).

For the stage analogy, a lot of filmmakers in this situation probably would have the impulse to make certain aspects more theatric or over-the-top. Here, it’s very low key. Was it important to you to keep the film as grounded as possible for that reason?

Well, there’s some of that. With the performances, that’s the only thing I care about when it comes to realism. The rest of the film, like the camera moves, the design, and even the story, that wasn’t the case. If you just take two steps back from the story and paraphrase what it’s actually about, it’s slightly ridiculous. But when you’re in the moment, it should be absolutely believable. A lot of English films are very naturalistic with shaky cam and grain, but I wanted this to be very colorful and very cinematic. So that’s where that came from, but with the actors I wanted them to be entirely believable.

I was very lucky to get three astounding actors to do the film, and they made it easier to keep the film grounded. What cinema has over theater is that I choose what you look at it, but in theater you can look all over the stage and see the reactions, rather than the person acting. I’m in control of what you look at it. You can bring a lot of power to it the way theater cant.

A lot of the power comes from the aftermath of the violence more than the violence itself, and there’s not a whole lot it. Are you surprised by how violent people say the film is?

Oh, absolutely. There’s actually not a lot of violence, but I think the threat of violence is there throughout the film in the characters. But there’s actually not much violence, but they do manhandle her and there’s some punctures like the gunshot. People remember it as violent, but it’s not. In real life a small amount of violence is terrifying, so I wanted to make it a bit like that. Violence is brutal and shocking no matter how big it is. Someone running being shot at by two guys with AK-47′s is extremely shocking, and so is someone getting punched on the nose.

I’d say how proficient Danny and Vic are is even more frightening than the violence. They’re not idiots. What made you wanna not go with showing just rookie amateurs?

It really irritates me in films when bad guys are stupid. It’s their job. Being in prison means they failed at some point, but I hate it in films where plans fall apart, especially if it’s a good plan. I’ve always been a big fan of Michael Mann’s Heat, because they really plan everything out and they’re smarter than the police. For me, making idiotic psychopathic bad guys, which is usually the case in movies, isn’t as frightening as someone who’s very calm and efficient.

Watching these people going to places you recognize like a hardware store, buying a bed at a furniture shop, or going to the grocery store, these are very normal everyday places and they look like normal day people doing normal things. But when they all add up it’s something quite horrible. I wanted to make it quite mundane. The fact that they stop to eat sandwiches and food breaks, they’re calm and it’s their job to be good criminals. Their plan is undone not because they’re not good at their jobs, but because they’re not very good at their personal lives.

The setup for the kidnapping just throws you right in, as well. There’s no hour-long setup or flashbacks, what made you want to just start off immediately with the kidnapping?

The reveals in the film are basically just what I haven’t shown you so far. I’ve seen so many films and read so many scripts where the first ten pages are just crammed with exposition. It’s just people on-screen telling you what you need to know about the characters: their backgrounds, their personal life, their love life, and their work life. I really didn’t want to do that and I wanted to throw the audience into the deep end, and let them play catchup. You know, audiences are extremely smart and throwing them into the deep end is fine.

They’ll be asking questions, which is great, but my intention was when they started asking questions they’d make up assumptions from the genre and what they expect. They would think they’d know what was going on because they’ve seen this type of movie before and they think they know who these characters are. You sort of assume one of the duo is a focused ex-con and the other is the young twitchy guy, who’s probably going to do something wrong. And you know the woman is this helpless, screaming, rich girl. You assume they’re going to do something absolutely horrible to her, but when they don’t do that it becomes a different film. They just want her for the money.

The audience is already a bit lost at sea because they don’t know what’s going on, and hopefully for the rest of the film they can’t guess what’s going to happen next until the very end. Anything can happen in this film. From the beginning I wanted to have that very ambiguity, even with the way it’s shot. You don’t know who’s the exact bad guy. While Alice’s name is in the title, you don’t see her face until about twenty minutes in and she doesn’t have a proper line of dialog, as well. You’re not sure who is the protagonist and it keeps switching from one character to another.

I really didn’t want to give the audience anything to hang their hats on. Even with the music and the way we shot it we didn’t want to tell the audience who the good or bad guys are, or what to think. I just wanted to show them what’s going on and let them make their own decisions. I think a lot of people haven’t liked that about the film (laughs), but I’m quite pleased by the fact you don’t know who the good guy is. When you get to know Alice she’s not a particularly nice person, either. She’s not the perfect person. Usually when someone is in peril the audience always wants them to be the good guy, but then they turn out not to be so nice. She’s a bit of a spoiled brat.