In the latest Netflix crime thriller, Reptile, a small-town tragedy unearths dark truths and the breadth of institutionalized corruption as one police detective searches for the culprit. Directed and co-written by Grant Singer, the movie stars Academy Award winner Benicio del Toro as Detective Tom Nichols, who investigates the murder of a young realtor. As Nichols and his wife, Judy (Alicia Silverstone), dig deeper into the case, including looking into the realtor's boyfriend, Will Grady (Justin Timberlake), they begin to realize his longtime friends and colleagues have murderous secrets of their own.
In an exclusive interview with CBR, Reptile director Grant Singer explained the feelings he hopes the movie evokes for audiences, praised his co-stars and collaborators for their help in bringing this cinematic vision to life, and shared how the movie came together.
CBR: Grant, when you were working with cinematographer Mike Gioulakis, how did you want to capture the look of the film with its landscapes and use of light?
Grant Singer: Mike and I instantly hit it off because we share a lot of the same taste in film. There are a lot of films that we both love. My tastes are all over the place, but I certainly love simple, classical films with innocent pans, boom ops, a tilt down or stillness, being very graphic and composed, lending conviction and commitment to a still image with restraint. These are things I admire in filmmaking. It's really like architecture.
First and foremost, with the lensing of the movie, there were a lot of different influences, both for me personally and Mike can talk about his own influences. Films like Night of the Hunter, In Cold Blood, Serpico, Rosemary's Baby, and obviously, Hitchcock is a huge reference. I love the way he films. There's a serenity to Hitchcock's filmmaking, especially in Vertigo. Vertigo is the most beautiful California movie ever. It's a love letter to California and an artifact of what California looked like in 1957. It's so beautiful and rich with its colors.
Movies like this can be quite austere and cold sometimes. We wanted to counterbalance the unnerving coldness of whatever tone there might be with more warmth, beauty, and serenity in the colors in the filmmaking.
This film tonally is much more existential crisis than conventional crime thriller, like Cop Land by way of The Last Picture Show. What did you want to say about crime movies and small-town crime with this story?
In America, we have this fascination with violent crime, and there's often an ambiguity there that I think is very interesting [to] explore -- the idea that good people can do bad things. We wanted to create this multifaceted sense of deception, both in the story's construction and also in the experiences of the characters themselves. We wanted to have a prologue where you experience a day in the life of these two characters, and then you pass the baton 10 minutes to the protagonist. As that story starts to unfold with that protagonist, everything you saw in those opening minutes starts to shift depending on the new information you have.
There's also this idea that the hunter is the hunted, which is something that you see done really beautifully in Coppola's The Conversation. Gene Hackman's character is eavesdropping on these two people, thinking that they're potential victims of a crime, only learning later that it's something different. It's that manipulation through filmmaking and storytelling that's exciting to us and to tell this story in clever ways, with this idea of history repeating itself. With Benicio's character, his arc is this recreation of trauma in order to overcome one's past, with the idea of the past coming back to haunt you and the grayness of crime. There were a lot of different things that we were exploring in this film.
Ultimately, for me, as my directorial debut, I wanted to evoke a feeling. At the end of the day, when it's all said and done, I find myself revisiting movies because I want to feel the way they make me feel. I want to be transported into the world and atmosphere of a film. There's a film I love called In the Bedroom by Todd Field, and it's one of my favorite movies since I first saw it when I was in high school. Aside from Tom Wilkinson and Sissy Spacek's wonderful performances, I want to feel the world of In the Bedroom. I just love the way the film portrays these characters' grief, retribution, the cycles of violence, and all these different things.
But ultimately, the way the movie makes you feel is so poignant, striking, and specific. I was trying to create a very specific feeling with this film.
The In the Bedroom connection is evident in the scenes between Benicio del Toro and Alicia Silverstone. I think this is the first time they've worked together since Excess Baggage. Whenever those two are on-screen together, it's electric.
Yeah, it was amazing! I'll never forget sitting across from Benicio in L.A. one day and talking about who could play Judy. He brought her name up, and I thought that was amazing and really inspired. Once we started talking with her, it was very apparent that she was perfect. Once she came to Atlanta, where we shot and started rehearsing, I was watching these scenes come to life in such vivid, lived-in ways. The way she inhabits this character is so vulnerable and also strong. She grounds this movie emotionally in a way that's a beautiful juxtaposition to the evils that Benicio's character faces in his life.
Often in these movies, you have the detective who can't eat, can't sleep, is an alcoholic, and their relationship with their loved one is ruined because of how obsessed they are [with] solving a crime. In this one, Benicio is solving a crime, but he's also obsessed with his home renovation. As the film unfolds, his relationship with his wife actually grows even stronger. Even in this moment where he projects his frustration about this case, it isn't to his wife. It's to his contractor just because that's the only person he can show that moment to because he could never dare to tell his wife and allow his wife to see him as not impenetrable. It's this really interesting thing that we do with her and that character, but she just did a phenomenal job.
You worked with Benicio del Toro on a lot of levels of the production for Reptile. How was it having him as a collaborator?
It was incredible! We spent a lot of time together before we got to set. We talked a lot about this project, but also about movies in general, and got to know each other as people. By the time we were rolling camera, there was this trust and comfort with one another. As a collaborator, he's just a dream collaborator. He's so thoughtful [and] passionate. He cares so much. As someone who cares so much too, it's really nice to have someone who also really cares and brings so much passion and hard work to their craft. Those are things I respond to. I love being around people who share that same sentiment that I have, but he was just a dream collaborator.
We've never seen Justin Timberlake like this before. He keeps you guessing about his character's motivations as the movie progresses. How was it working with him?
Justin is not just a phenomenal actor and amazing musician. He's like this Renaissance man. He's one of the world's greatest performers, dancers, and singers. We met a few months prior on a music project I directed for him, and we instantly hit it off. He read the script, responded to it, loved my vision for it, and he was the one who was like, "I've never played a character like this. This is very exciting to me."
I loved the fact that he was willing to take the leap and play a character who's not very likable -- who's grieving but withholding. He's a gray character who's constantly changing his performance depending on who he's around. There are moments where it's like, "Is this person acting this way because there are police around? Is this person lying? Is this person hiding something?"
There are all these levels of truth while also grieving their significant other. It's a really complicated role, and I thought he did a phenomenal job. He brings so much insight and thoughtfulness into the character. I have so many memories of leaving the set and him calling me or me calling him and talking for hours about whatever he was doing the next day. He's such an amazing guy and an incredible actor. [He's] just so passionate and great to work with. It was such a phenomenal cast.
While music videos obviously have a much different feel than feature films, there is a cadence to Reptile, especially when you're building tension. How did you want to approach the pacing?
The way that I like to shoot and the way that I like to cut -- all credit to my editor, Kevin Hickman, he knows I like things very rhythmic. I'm very musical in the way that I edit and shoot, and I like [for] there to be this constant, propulsive but restrained, smooth rhythmic quality. It's hard to even describe, but in terms of pacing, I think there's this rhythm to the movie, and it really stays. The therapist sequence is a little more lyrical and poetic in terms of its structure, but it doesn't betray the construction of the movie. It's just an added flavor.
A lot of those things are intuitive. I think of directing the same way I think of speaking. You might watch a bunch of movies and learn how people speak, but at the end of the day, you're just going to speak how you speak, and directing is the same way. You get to set, it's a blank canvas, you've got actors, start rehearsing, and figure out where you're going to place the camera. You feel your way into whatever it ends up being. Yes, certain things are preconceived, but oftentimes, it's just whatever feels intuitively correct in the moment.
I wanted to talk about the movie's ending, with the kids peering in on all this carnage after their Frisbee accidentally hits the window during the climax. What was it about having that punctuate the movie that appealed to you?
Throughout the movie, there are these serendipitous acts of God that change the course of the film. When Benicio is in his office, and he accidentally drops the case file, these two photos of the dead victim fall out, and that's when he remembers that this could be a bite, which changes the course of the rest of the movie. In this moment of heightened tension, all of a sudden, this Frisbee hits the window, and you're like, "Oh my god. It's an act of God! What are the chances?!"
The idea of the kids playing is that the kids are me. I'm the director. This is my first movie, and I'm playing. At the end of the movie, I'm peering in and making eye contact with my lead actor. That's the metaphor. This is just me reading into it, but the purpose of the kids' ending is a way for me to acknowledge that this is me playing, and I get to have this moment where I make eye contact with my lead actor. It's this playful moment that tonally encompasses the rest of the movie because there are moments of warmth and playfulness that cut against the unnerving tension. The kids at the window are me.
What did you want to say with this project as your feature directorial debut?
First and foremost, I wanted to make a movie that's very strong on feeling. A lot of times when I'm watching movies, as I'm watching them, I don't even know what I'm watching. I'm just immersed in the filmmaking. I can see the movie and can really be moved by it, but I had no idea what I just saw. This film, I was trying to create this really strong sense of atmosphere and the themes we talked about earlier in our interview, but most importantly, to make a good movie, to make a movie that I would want to watch.
At the end of the day, this is a movie that I wanted to make, and I wanted to see. This is a movie that we wrote, we all felt would be a good movie, and then we executed it. At the end of the day, a movie is a movie, and you either execute it or you don't. I wanted to execute this vision, make something that was unique, and create a filmic vision that was specific to me. People ask who are my influences for this film. I'm a student of film, so I have billions of influences that influenced me or changed my life.
At the end of the day, this movie is me. This moment, this scene was me choosing to do this because it was what I thought was intuitive and an expression of my vision. It was just to make something that felt like my vision for this movie.
Directed and co-written by Grant Singer, Reptile is available to stream on Netflix on Sept. 29.