Christian Sesma’s new action picture Lights Out stars Frank Grillo, Mekhi Phifer, Scott Adkins, Donald Cherrone, Dermot Mulroney and Jamie King. It tells the story of a drifting ex-soldier (Grillo) who turns underground fighter with the help of a just released ex-con, pitting them both against a crime boss, corrupt cops and hired killers.
Christian stopped by to chat about the film with us.
Hey brother, good to talk to you again.
You too, man. Been a while.
Yeah. So, today we’re chatting about your new film Lights Out with a script from Chad Law & Garry Charles. Of course, you worked with Chad before on Section Eight. What was it that appealed about the script and the story too?
Well, the cool thing was with this is I kind of always know what to expect on the beats like, Chad is probably the most prolific action writer right now in the indie world. Nobody else is doing what he’s doing and luckily, we’ve kind of found our groove together making a bunch of these. I think that when we had just wrapped Section Eight right before Christmas, then took the holidays off. Then Chad and the same producer, Brandon Burrows came on. They’re like, “Dude, we have an opportunity to make this movie called Lights Out. It’s a cool little fight movie. We are gonna go right away. We gotta go like in a few weeks”, like it was fast. They said “do you want to read it?” and I said “sure”. So, I read it and it was like, wow, this is kind of a cool Lionheart/Roadhouse, throwback, 80s flick. I was like, “Shit, I’ve never done a real true fight movie”. I don’t know if I even wanted to do one because I always felt like, man, it’s hard. It’s hard to pull them off tonally unless you’re doing just a straight martial arts one, like Undisputed or something. Those are awesome in their own world, but that’s its own world. This one felt much more of, how do I make this contemporary? And how do I make this a character driven fight movie, but like a gritty brawler fight movie, not like a slick fight movie? So, that was the thing. I was like, I think I’m up for the challenge and then we started. Then Frank, Mekhi and Jamie came on board and it was just such a great core cast. Then everybody else started jumping on board. It was really fun, so it was a ride.
I thought Jamie King was a revelation in this movie. She was just a monster. Why was she the perfect choice for Ellen Ridgway?
Well, I think when we started talking about that, I want to say we switched it. I’m trying to remember what she was in the original draft; I have to read it. But I want to say that she became Ellen Ridgway at the end. But when Jamie came on board, I remember having our first meeting in LA, and we sat down, we’re having coffee, she’s smoking cigarettes, and we’re talking about the character. The trick here is with this movie, I feel like in this genre, it’s so easy to go off rails and go real cheesy, and real tropey where we’ve seen that a million times. But Jamie’s idea to take it real low, real subtle, and real chill was really cool. Then that kind of doubled down on this idea and the tone of how I wanted to do this. I said, “Look, to be the most soft spoken most dangerous person in the room, it would be something cool. And especially with a female villain, it’s something we don’t get to see a lot of times in these movies”. So, a lot of times you’ll think Dermot is the villain but no, Dermot is the opportunist. Ridgway is the villain, you know? It was one of those things where, I thought what she brought to the table was really new and fresh and cool. That is something that was like our mantra as we went through; how do we keep pushing this so it feels pretty fresh?
I find a villain is better whenever they’re quieter, rather than just shouting all the time and being over the top; the threat is quieter. Then we have your buddy Paul Sloan as Kincaid.
He can be the shouting guy (laughs).
He’s still the best Frank Castle we’ve never had. I’ve always thought he should be The Punisher.
Believe it or not, that’s why we made Vigilante Diaries back in the day. That was my Frank Castle. That’s the whole idea when we created that series, back in 2013. We were like why don’t we just make our own Punisher? And that’s what we did.
He’s been like pretty much every one of your films, hasn’t he?
Almost every one, for sure.
I’m a huge Frank Grillo fan. I think he’s got that modern Charles Bronson vibe. A natural tough guy persona which makes him perfect for roles like this. How did you find working with him?
Oh, it was great. When I read this, I’m like, this movie is tailor made for Frank. You can showcase not just the drama and the acting, but he really is a skilled boxer and skilled fighter. I’ve been a fan of Frank’s for a long time. I used to go to the same gym he used to go; he basically lives there. It’s this popular boxing gym in LA. And every once in awhile I see him. I’m like, Oh, my God. It’s Frank Grillo, and I would see him hit pads and spar. I’m like, man, this guy’s the real deal. When this movie came, you can’t fake that, that’s why Scott’s the Master; you can’t fake that physicality and that skill set. That’s why when you have guys that can actually act and do that you just have this magic on screen. Having both of these guys on screen, it’s pretty amazing.
Yeah, were they involved putting their fight scenes together?
I think it was a mix of both like, Luke Fontaine, the stunt/fight coordinator was able to put together the baseline things, and we just kind of adjusted that. I mean, when Frank and I were speaking about the style of this movie, the idea was to make it like backyard brawler style, not like slick John Wick choreo. Different styles. When we talked about Snatch, when we talked about Fight Club, and things like those movies, the fights weren’t anything. It’s the story and the drama and how we were doing it where you’re like, “Wow, that was a brutal flight”. But if you talked about it from a choreography standpoint, it wasn’t that crazy; it wasn’t a complex, slick martial arts choreography. I felt like this movie Lights Out, we weren’t dealing with trained killers or hitmen or martial artists; you’re dealing with backyard brawlers. Or you go down to the pub, you want to go in the back and there’s some guys fighting for money. That’s what the world of this is, so they couldn’t be trained slick killers, or else they’d be in the military. I mean, Frank was in the military in the script, which is why he’s the best at what he does. He’s ex-military, but everybody else he’s dealing with is just street level fighters which is why you’re gonna dominate. We were just making sure that was always part of our tone here so we don’t go, “Hey, this guy is doing crazy things. Why isn’t he in the UFC? Why isn’t he fighting professional boxing?” So, it was the things I was making sure that felt as part of the tone, so we still make sure we’re in an underground street world; not a slick fight world.
That’s what I liked about it. I’ve had this discussion quite a lot lately whenever I do live streams. So many movies look like they take place in a hyper-reality like John Wick, but Lights Out looks like it takes place in the real world. It makes it feel like the old school, real action movies, and I thought that was great, because it’s sometimes lacking in some modern movies.
So yeah, look at John Wick. I mean, John Wick 1 is so different from John Wick 2, right? I mean, John Wick took place in like real world, and then it became a gigantic universe. I’d say the same thing with this movie. I always thought of the very first Fast and Furious. That was just a street car movie. Like just guys gambling on the street, there wasn’t cars in space, you know? (laughs) They weren’t doing superhero. It wasn’t Marvel. They weren’t the Avengers in cars. This was just some street racing in LA, so I think that’s what I always tried to do with Lights Out was to make sure that we felt very street level.
One of my favorite aspects and some of the fight scenes was that cool X-ray effect, which was a nice throwback to Romeo Must Die.
Funnily enough talking about tone; this is something that came in in the editing process in the 11th hour, like this was a last-minute decision. I wrestled with this man, quite a bit. I was like, “Dude, do we do this? Is this one step over? Does this put us into like cheesy category”? We were kind of back and forth.
It’s in the awesome category.
Yeah, I’m glad you’re saying that because that was not my idea. This was the producer’s idea. Again, this is the collaboration. The producer was like, “why don’t we do this? And I’m like, “okay”, and I saw it. I didn’t like it at first and I sat on it. I was like “this could work”. Then I kind of took myself back and watched it as a whole movie and I go, “this kind of is cool”. It’s like a little sprinkling of coolness.
It’s not overdone either.
Right! I think that’s what it was when we were like, okay, and that was kind of like the final decision. It’s not overdone; we do it in very specific places. For me, it really helps drive home what happens when Frank fights the guy in the arena, and he breaks his neck. I feel like that’s what happened to that guy, and you wouldn’t have driven that point home if it wasn’t for the X-ray shots. I think those things were little sprinkles of cool; I think that X-ray is like our edge. This is the edge; anything more than this, forget it.
I love the character of Duffy and I feel like we’ve just started to scratch the surface of him. I’m thinking I want a Kane from Kung Fu kind of series because he could just walk around and get into adventures.
Yeah, I was talking to somebody else about this. I felt like with my deep dive of cinema and just being just a massive cinema nerd. This is for me, no different than like a modern indie gritty version of Akira Kurosawa’s Yojimbo. A lone samurai walks into a town by himself, and takes on the town and leaves. Same thing with Last Man Standing and A Fistful of Dollars. All based on Yojimbo. So yeah, it’s the same thing. Duffy was our modern-day rogue Samurai, our Ronin that just walks, handles business, helps out and walks out into sunset.
What would you like audiences take away from Lights Out?
Well, I hope they have a really great time. I hope they feel like they could see a really fun, kick ass fight movie that’s driven by its characters. Really, the core heart of this movie is sometimes when you’re alone, like Duffy’s character and he finds a connection and finds a new family that he can connect with. I think that’s something universal that we can all take away.
LIGHTS OUT will release In Theaters, On Digital, and On Demand on February 16th, 2024.
