For writer/director Aaron Harvey, revenge tales have lived inside his head for a long time, gathering stock and revered anxiety. His latest film, Into the Ashes (currently available in limited theaters and on-demand), is an exploration of those themes, soaked in vengeance and investigating the struggle between good and bad inside one's soul.
This past week, I spoke to Harvey about the worth of that film-making journey, casting it, and the exact science behind finding the right style and look for a film. What I came away with was a guy trying to make small films loom large in a moviegoer's mind. Someone pushing the door open for tightly wound indie films.
The revenge genre was always his cup of tea, as one could see with The Neighbor and his new film. "I was always interested in making my own revenge drama. Two men who have to rectify their relationship with each other over this shared tragedy. The story just came out of that. It wrote itself really. I have a reservoir in the back of my brain for these kind of movies," Harvey said when asked about how Into the Ashes came to be.
Casting was a vital aspect of the film, as Harvey noted it was an actor's film. "It's all in the material. My producing partner, Rob Barnum, passed it onto a couple agents and one of them, who carried more weight, loved the script," Harvey said. "When we started looking at C.A.A. and keeping it in scope so it wouldn't get out of my hands, I assembled a list of actors."
The list started with Luke Grimes, whom Harvey spotted on a yet-to-be-released Paramount Network show starring Kevin Costner. "I had seen Luke in Yellowstone and thought he was interesting. It's always nice when you can get someone to do something they aren't known to do. Luke was in Fifty Shades of Grey and he's this pretty guy, and Yellowstone hadn't come out yet," Harvey said. "(Luke) was the first guy in. In real life, he is this guy. He owns this 60-acre property that he hunts deer on. He really got into it."
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After Grimes, Frank Grillo (The Purge: Anarchy, Wheelman), James Badge Dale, and Robert Taylor of Longmire signed on to the project. For the most part, Harvey got all of his first choices for casting.
After all, Into the Ashes walks to its own beat, refusing to give into genre conventions. The story follows Nick (Grimes), a seemingly normal husband living in Alabama, who is hiding a shady past. When mysterious men show up in his life demanding him to answer for his past (Grillo's Sloan and company), Nick has to tap into violent tendencies that he had buried long ago.
Here is a movie that lacked black and white character outlines, something Harvey went for. "We talked a lot about that. It's choices, not right or wrong. Shades of gray. Nothing is black and white. Other movies can tell you how to feel about characters," Harvey said.
That doesn't mean certain characters can't possess a unique quality, such as Grillo's character. "Frank has this sort of posture already. The demeanor is already there. There's an ominousness to him. He's walking down the hallway in that prison, and others are looking away. He's a very intense guy," Harvey said.
The look of the film, which reminded me of Scott Cooper's Out of The Furnace, was vital to the execution. "John, the director of photography, and I wanted it to be stylish, but not to let the style overwhelm you. We wanted to make it feel authentic, which made me a little nervous, because we didn't have a huge budget. What you see on screen is what you see on screen," Harvey said.
He didn't want the look to fall into conventional traps, like so many other films. "Honing it on the little details gave you that depressed, weighty feeling. I am a stickler for the aesthetic of a movie. Everybody can pick up a camera and point it at something, but that's not what really makes a movie a movie," Harvey noted.
For Harvey, it's all about what you show and when you show it. Whether it's the action or the camera work, it's about teasing your senses and not overdoing it. "Giving you a flavor of what's going to happen. It's all part of the design," Harvey said. "To me, it's an interpersonal drama. It's not about the action. This movie isn't John Wick. It's more of a poem than anything."
Into the Ashes isn't your ordinary revenge film. It's more of a meditative look at how the vengeance breeds, comes to life, and spreads across someone's soul. The movie is overly creative in its final third, but I thought that was a strength, especially when it came to the outcome of a certain character.
Aaron Harvey may have only three directing credits to his name, including the Bruce Willis-starring Catch .44, but that's the mark of a guy making films that exist deep in his bones. When they break out of his mind, we see them.
If you want a solid thriller with humanistic elements and characters who don't hand you a post-it note to attach to them, watch Into the Ashes. After all, as Harvey frequently points out, small films need big love.
