No Way Up sees a plane crash-land in the ocean and end up teetering on an undersea ravine whilst the few survivors struggle to find means of escape with limited air. To make matters worse, a group of sharks has shown up to pick them off.
ComingSoon’s Senior Editor for Horror Neil Bolt spoke with director Claudio Fäh and star Sophie McIntosh about filming in a real plane, the challenges that brought, and how it made the shoot a tight-knit one.
Neil Bolt: You’re in tight confines for quite a large portion of the film. What challenges did that bring when filming?
Claudio Fäh: Yeah, this was all about claustrophobia, wasn’t it? Right from the get go! We decided early that in order for everyone to feel trapped in where we are, we couldn’t rely too much on visual effects and where we could do stuff for real, we did. Which meant we took a good section of an actual plane and placed it in a water tank at various angles and depths. It almost felt like an art installation! It felt so incredibly real and it just helped us. It was very anxiety-inducing. Not just for the actors, but the crew as well because there was no room. That’s what it felt like, right Sophie?
Sophie McIntosh: I remember the first time I realized how tight it was going to be, I was having a conversation with the safety diver, and he was like, ‘’Oh, don’t worry, all the top panels of the plane come off, and it hadn’t even occurred to me we were going to be completely enclosed and underwater until that moment.
Yeah, knowing you’re going to be in a real plane submerged underwater probably doesn’t do much for your confidence! You have some cracking veteran support in this movie, Sophie, with the likes of Colm Meaney and Phyllis Logan involved. How helpful was their experience for you in leading this movie?
Sophie: I mean, they were incredible. Just working with them, particularly Phyllis, spending a lot of very close time together and getting to watch her work was such an honor. Learning from her and going through it together in many ways as were both freezing, both in this tiny space. Getting to witness her craft was really cool.
Ava’s journey from a coddled young woman to crisis leader is interesting and the conduit for it is clearly the connection between you Sophie, and Grace Nettle. Was that reflected in your relationship while filming?
Sophie: She was incredible. I think it was for Ava; she suddenly isn’t the coddled young woman in that scenario because of this child to look after. She really takes on that mentor role. It was really fun working with Grace, and it was so hard for her, what was she about 12-13 when we were filming?
Claudio: About that, yeah
Sophie: And she was there, leading the way.
There’s something of a throwback nature to the movie in that it shares a lot with 70s disaster movies. I’m thinking obviously along the lines of the Airport movies, or the Poseidon Adventure was that a touchstone for you Claudio?
Claudio: Oh absolutely, and having seen those movies as a kid; having admired Airport ‘77, The Poseidon Adventure, The Towering Inferno, where the location and the circumstantial location definitely play a huge part in what this is, so of course it came right into this. And of course, like many people, Jaws is one of my all-time favorite movies and without trying to take too much from that, and being in a very different league to that, we did make some subtle homages to that too. I couldn’t resist paying tribute to a movie that’s mad me afraid of the water as a kid.
That’s stayed with me for many years as well. Never really gone away. I was going to say even the soundtrack riffs on the Jaws theme in places, which was a nice touch! Claudio, it’s been a while since you directed a feature-length film. Was returning to that with No Way Up any different for you?
Claudio: Well, I think it’s different with every movie, but funnily enough, I came off of doing a limited series in my native Switzerland. It was a show we shot in the middle of winter, hip-deep snow, up in the mountains, inclement weather, and then I remember Andy Mayson (No Way Up’s writer) calling me and going, ‘’Hey, you wanna come film a movie where a plane crashes into the Pacific Ocean?’’ and I was like, ‘’Yeah, bring it on!’’
Why not!
But yeah, coming off that limited series, all of which I directed myself, it suddenly felt like, ‘’Well, it’s kind of a relief to not have so much work on my hands with this film’’ It felt more manageable than previous films, mostly because it’s 90 minutes to deal with.
But I think the big challenge with a feature film is you have to condense things, you have to be poignant and make a point quickly. You don’t have the luxury of meandering and making secondary characters into extra protagonists so with this one, where do you find the emotion and dimensions of the characters from? You don’t have as much screentime, you don’t have much production time to create that, so I felt incredibly fortunate to have people like Sophie and the gang who were willing to add to these characters. I think that makes or breaks a movie, they were really great at that.
So Sophie alluded to this ‘’all in it together’’ feeling you had with fellow actors on the shoot, I imagine it was the same mentality for the whole crew?
Claudio: Well, you touched upon it earlier with the relationship between the characters, Ava is this person, who doesn’t believe in herself and has this silver spoon support system as the daughter of the Governor of California, so there are all these male pillars in her life and all that falls away on the plane and suddenly that shifts thanks to Phyllis and Grace’s character. There she finds resilience she didn’t know she had and that creates a wonderful throughline and some emotional heft.
Absolutely. And for you Sophie?
Sophie: I was going to say, the ‘’all in it together’’ was very much the case for all of us as we all were there confined together and that was part of why it was such an amazing experience. The crew as well, the tank is only so big, and you have everyone basically hanging around it, you can’t help but be close.
With the intensity of what you had to go through, has No Way Up given you a taste for starring in a full-on horror movie?
Sophie: I mean, I wouldn’t say no, but I’m actually the biggest chicken, I never watch horror films, but it’s quite fun doing it.
It doesn’t seem to be uncommon for people in genre cinema that they’re comfortable making horror, but they can’t stand the sight of real blood or find watching horror difficult, so maybe you’re well suited for the genre!
So to end on a lighter note, What scares you more, flying or sharks?
Sophie: Flying! I’ve always been a bit of a nervous flyer. I don’t know if I’d want to be in the water with a Tiger Shark, but I do really love sharks.
Claudio: I think if I came face to face with a shark, then yeah…sharks! But I will say that with flying, having done a shoot on a plane now, I was flying from London to Zurich and slept most of the way, but when I woke up I realized, ‘’this is exactly the kind of plane we shot in!’’ and I found myself sitting in Ava’s seat too! Suddenly I’m having a weird flashback and thinking, ‘’I know exactly what’s gonna happen!’’ So whereas I thought this movie would have a cathartic effect on flying with all this knowledge of the plane’s layout, that didn’t happen!
Sophie: I’m always thinking of the lifejackets now, I spent far too long in those lifejackets! I don’t ever want to put one on again!
NO WAY UP opens in theaters and everywhere you rent movies on February 16.
