Interview: ‘Dark Encounter’ Director Carl Strathie

With his newest film Dark Encounter releasing this week, we caught up with filmmaker Carl Strathie to talk about sci-fi film. We also spoke a bit about his last film Solis, working with Laura Fraser, and Strathie even shares his thoughts on if we’re truly alone in the universe.. To find out more, you can read our complete conversation below!

Dark Encounter is now available on DVD and VOD from Amazon and other media retailers.

Horror Geek Life: For our readers, can you explain in a nutshell what your newest feature Dark Encounter is about?

Carl Strathie: Dark Encounter takes place a year after the mysterious disappearance of a little girl called Maisie. Her grieving family attend a memorial service, marking a year since her disappearance. That evening, the family start to see strange lights in the night sky, and things pretty much intensify from there. We follow the Anderson family, specifically Olivia and Ray, Maisie’s mother and father, and how they’re struggling with the loss of their little girl. Essentially it’s about life and loss. It’s a heartbreaking story, really emotional in places, but it is also magical and enchanting, and yet also terrifying. A real mixture of emotions.

HGL: As a big fan of Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, I’m happy to see Laura Fraser in a starring role in Dark Encounter. What led to her involvement in the film?

CS: I am also a huge Breaking Bad fan! It’s sort of my religion, just playing on repeat in the background whilst we work sometimes. A masterclass in storytelling… We were having trouble casting, and the shoot date was creeping up. Our Casting Director proposed Laura Fraser, and Charlette (Producer) and I kinda’ just lost our shit a little bit when we saw her name on the list – being such fans. We sent her the script, and quite quickly we got a response; she was very interested and wanted to chat with me. I was very excited. I had to calm myself down. I think I might have even peed a little bit… But we spoke on the phone. I was instantly confused as Laura is Scottish in reality, yet I was expecting an American accent after her portrayal as Lydia in Breaking Bad. So I think, after assuming I had the wrong number, I asked “is Laura available”? And she was equally as confused with my Essex accent, because she was expecting an American due to Dark Encounter being set in the states. So we had a lot to giggle out right from the word go, which broke the ice and we got on right away. She later told me she wanted to be involved in the film because of the combination between an abduction story and a sci-fi story. She loved the science-fiction aspect, especially in the second half of the film, and was intruiged by its meanings.

HGL: With Dark Encounter and Solis, you’ve now got two sci-fi features under your belt and you’re clearly a fan of the genre. Do you intend to stick mostly with sci-fi moving forward, or do you see yourself branching out into other genres?

CS: I certainly do love sci-fi, and I do plan to make many more in the future. I think the genre dominates the majority of my ideas and my favourite films. But I do have many other scripts that delve into other genres, such as dark comedies, horrors, action thrillers and even a few survival films, and we’re currently in the process in trying to get a couple of those off the ground. I didn’t set out to specifically make sci-fi, it’s just turned out that my first two are of that genre. But I think we might be breaking the sci-fi pattern with the third feature…

HGL: You’ve written both of your features in addition to directing them. Each role seems like they would be challenging yet rewarding in their own ways. Why take this approach with your filmmaking, and do you happen to prefer one over the other?

CS: I absolutely love writing. It’s my therapy. It’s also my hobby, in a way. If I’m not writing something, I don’t really know what to do with myself. The only times I’m not writing is when I’m physically making a film; in preproduction, shooting one, or in post. I can’t write another script during those periods. I need to be 100% focussed on the film I’m making. But if I’m not making a film, I’m always writing something, whether it’s a re-draft or polish of the next film we intend to make or the first draft of a brand new idea. I see myself as a writer first simply because I have written more than I have directed, having only directed two features. But both jobs are very different. When I’m Carl The Director I like to forget about Carl The Writer. Of course I want to honour him and his script, but when you’re on set things change and alter, actors do something you don’t expect, that prop breaks, or budget and time prevents you from simply shooting the damn scene. It’s nice knowing I can come away from the script to some degree, if we have to, without worrying about pissing off the writer! But do I prefer one over the over? I love writing. I really do. I get to write from home in my own comfort, with a cup of tea by my side, in peace and quiet, with a narcissistic cat pouncing onto my desk, sharing all of her problems with me (she’s lovely really). When I’m directing, it’s a circus. A very well orchestrated and professional circus at that, with compliments to our Producer Charlette. But it’s high-octane madness. And directing is for a very short period of time. It’s suddenly all over and you go home to the bloody cat again. And I really miss it when it’s over. It’s so much fun, telling stories visually with all these amazing people. So both jobs are very different, but equally as great. Like having two children, I think I love them equally.

HGL: Steven Ogg is undoubtedly one of today’s best character actors. What was it like working with him on Solis, and how different is he in real life from the characters he plays?

CS: Steven was great to work with. He tends to play these similar roles, these creepy, mad, wouldn’t-want-to-meet-him-in-a-dark-alley kinda’ roles. We approached with with the role of Troy Holloway in Solis to play something totally different. Something where he’s vulnerable and emotional, which is his character Holloway’s state in the second half of the film. We break his character down completely, physically and emotionally. We’ve never seen Steven that way before. In real life, I don’t feel Steven is million miles away from Holloway. He’s an emotional purpose, thoughtful and a deep thinker. I think this is why he connected to the role. He saw a lot of himself. He saw a lot of reflections…

HGL: On that subject, Dark Encounter also shares some of its cast members with Solis. Were these roles written specifically for those cast members, or did you think back upon their roles in Solis and realize certain actors would be a good fit during the Dark Encounter casting process?

CS: Unlike Solis, when it came to casting Dark Encounter, nothing was written for anyone. I essentially wrote the role of Holloway in Solis for Steven. But I didn’t do that for Dark Encounter. I just wanted to see where casting took us. It wasn’t until later on we were struggling with casting Arlene Burroughs, the aunt. The character felt a little weak in the script too, if I’m honest. Then a light bulb idea lead us to Alice Lowe who voiced Roberts in “Solis”. We got on really well with Alice, and wanted to work with her again, for a role in the flesh, so we cast Alice as Arlene and she brought what was missing to the role, which turned out to be a little bit of humour. Sid Phoenix only had a very small voice role in Solis. He gave a few lines to Milton (the dead guy in the seat beside Steven Ogg in the entire film – who you never see alive) at the very start of the film over a weak and hardly audible radio transmission. Sid was always a friend, a friend before we worked together, and I always like working with friends. We considered Sid for the role of Billy Anderson, the outcast uncle in Dark Encounter, very early on. I always consider friends first for certain roles. It’s awesome working with friends!

HGL: Dark Encounter explores aliens with science-fiction, but I’m curious to know where you stand when it comes to aliens in “real life.” What do you think – are we alone in the universe, or is something else out there?

CS: Dark Encounter is my love letter to Close Encounters Of The Third Kind, E.T. and other alien and UFO movies of the era, specially the Spielberg classics. It’s also my love letter to UFO’s in general. I was obsessed as a child with UFO and alien sighting books, and had a VHS collection of a UFO’s caught on tape series. So the film comes from my general interest of the phenomena. But where I stand with aliens and UFO’s in real life… that’s a whole other interview! But I guess I am very skeptical, like I am with Ghosts and anything paranormal. I always think there’s a logical and scientific explanation for everything. As a species we have been both gifted and burdened with imagination. We often jump to irrational conclusions before rational thought. I truly believe 99.9% of alien/UFO encounters are a load of nonsense. But there is that 0.01%… I do think there could be something odd. And UFO’s aren’t necessarily aliens from a distant planet. UFO’s can very easily be our governments toying with technology that they’re keeping from us. Okay, it’s not as exciting, but more realistic. I believe our governments, or some way higher form, are more advanced than we can imagine, and we are baffled when we see sightings of these technologies. And I guess I could believe in aliens. I’m thinking bacteria, or amoebas, living under a rock under the deepest ocean on some tiny moon orbiting a distant, dead planet. That’s possible. But then, when you consider the probability of life in itself: the chances of life to even exist are so slim. The odds are literally astronomical. And there could lie the answer; the odds of life are probably the amount of habitable plants orbiting perfect stars. Could every star and planet in the Universe be an attempt of sparking life? I think so. What else is it all for? Life only exists because of the Universe, and the Universe only exists because of life. We are the inevitable outcome. We probably are the universes way of becoming self aware. Which could mean we are alone in the universe. Which I think is more scary. But I think the “alien” prospect I think about a lot is the potential consciousness that decided life should exist in the first place. Call it God, or aliens, or whatever – but for something as truly impossible and as complex as life to exist through random and accidental unconscious happenings…. that doesn’t make any sense… I think I need a tea now.

HGL: What else can those who’ve enjoyed Solis and Dark Encounter look forward to seeing from you next? Any upcoming projects in the pipeline you can tell us about?

CS: We’re currently in early development for our third feature film. We enter preproduction in the New Year, set to shoot early 2020. This one isn’t a sci-fi. It’s a horror/thriller. People really love the script. And I think we’ve traumatised a few readers! One actor turned it down because it’s “too intense”. I think we might be pushing the boundaries or something truly horrific, and it’s not the sort of horror you’d expect either. This gets in your head and is extremely uncomfortable. It was very uncomfortable writing it. It made me very edgy. Especially when the cat pounces onto your desk out of nowhere…*

Dark Encounter is available on DVD and VOD, and you can watch the official trailer below.

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