Caught Inside, director Adam Blaiklock’s feature debut, is a film about one man’s dominance over a group. The tagline for the film – anyone is a weapon if you twist them right – echoes the director’s concept.
“I liked the idea of making a genre film where the violence and the threat comes from one man’s physical and psychological abuse rather than from who’s holding the gun or who’s holding the knife at any one point,” Blaiklock tells IF, adding that he aimed to avoid the stereotypes associated with this type of genre film, and make something “that had the right amount of tension without having to resort to gratuitous violence”.
The man in question is Bull, played by Fatty Finn star Ben Oxenbould – the central character in dream ‘surfari’, which turns into a nightmare of survival on an isolated yacht. The actor, who’s best known for his roles in sitcoms and comedy sketch shows, was the director's only choice for the lead role from very early on in the writing process.
But the shoot itself was far from smooth sailing for Oxenbould, who suffered a shoulder injury a week before filming was scheduled to begin and dislocated it almost every day leaving Blaiklock with the unenviable job of putting his shoulder back in.
“If you watch the film closely you’ll see he only throws punches with one arm and not the other because he couldn’t actually swing one of his arms,” the director reveals.
The film was shot on location in the Maldives over a period of four weeks. It was an incredibly small shoot, with only sixteen people in total (eight cast, eight crew) on two boats.
“Every one of the crew members was wearing two hats,” says Blaiklock revealing, for instance, that the sound recorder also provided all of the film’s water photography while the line producer doubled as first assistant director.
The quality of the finished product, and the filmmaking process, was acknowledged last year when Blaicklock picked up the National Film and Sound Archive Independent Spirit IF Award.
Despite the trials of shooting in an isolated location, Blaiklock insists that it was a very positive experience.
“It was ambitious to go and do the film the way we did it and regardless of the trials and tribulations of making a limited budget film, I’m really proud of what we achieved.”
Caught Inside is released in cinemas on October 6.