Movies
Interesting Casting For Sci-Fi Apocalyptic Thriller ‘2012’
Thomas McCarthy, the writer and director behind the season’s indie sleeper hit, “The Visitor,” is moving into disaster movie territory by booking a role in Roland Emmerich’s 2012. He will star alongside John Cusack that includes Amanda Peet, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Thandie Newton, Danny Glover and Oliver Platt. McCarthy will play the boyfriend of Peet, who is the ex-wife of Cusack’s character. Read on to see what he had to say about his role in the apocalyptic sci-fi thriller…
McCarthy said he is driven to roles out of curiosity.
“As an actor, I’ve never worked on anything with this scale before, and I always go see these movies,” he said. “And then there’s the director part of me. I get really excited about working with directors like this, who do things that are so wildly different from me. And he really is. He works on a totally different canvas.”
“It’s something (Gersh agent Rhonda Price) and I talk about: finding new things to do that are different and exciting from what we’ve done before, and this fits the bill.”
While some actors do big studio projects in order to sustain themselves in between indie character films, this is not the case here, McCarthy said.
“This does have a big budget and I do make more money, which is nice, but I know if you take a job like this just for the money, you’ll be miserable,” he said. “There’s got to be something as an actor, and also in this case, as a director, that I’m excited about. There are other ways for me to make money.”
McCarthy, much like John Sayles, who takes on studio writing jobs in between his movies, also does rewrites and polishes for the big companies.
McCarthy lately has been taking roles in movies being made by writer-directors as a way to learn things that apply to his own work, which is why he has gigs in Tony Gilroy’s “Duplicity” and “Peter Jackson’s” The Lovely Bones.”
“As a writer-director I love to work with other writer-directors,” he said. “It’s such a bonus for me. I’m not only watching and observing, I’m involved in the process. It’s cool luxury … I’ve only done two films, so there’s still a lot to learn here.”
“2012” is set to shoot in August in Vancouver. McCarthy also will begin working on a new script that he intends to direct.
In the meantime, he is enjoying the response to “Visitor,” which has grossed more than $7.6 million since Overture began its slow rollout in April.
“We have emerged as a nice alternative to the big movies that come out every weekend,” he said. “At some point, you probably want to see something a little different and I think we’ve become that something different … I didn’t know how it would hold up, but I am pleasantly surprised and obviously very happy.“
Judging from the unprecedented box office success of Kane Parsons’ Backrooms adaptation, you’ve likely already seen the liminal horror hit that managed to make audiences afraid of empty hallways and bad wallpaper. And now that so many of us have already entered the yellow labyrinth (some of us more than once), the time has come to discuss the spoiler-filled details that make the movie so fascinating in the first place.
And if there’s one element here that makes the Backrooms movie stand out from any previous lore/mythology, it has to be the genius addition of the Still Life entities. Warped recreations of real people that somehow wandered into the Complex, these misremembered creatures are responsible for some of the most disturbing imagery of 2026 – as well as laugh-out-loud memes created by one of the film’s very own concept artists.
However, true to Parsons’ word that the movie would rely heavily on practical effects, each of these distorted monsters was brought to life by real actors under heavy layers of makeup and prosthetics (with the occasional splash of CGI enhancements). While Anora and If I Had Legs I’d Kick You actress Ivy Wolk wasn’t among these performers, despite what Letterboxd might have you believe, the creature cast did benefit from veteran players with plenty of genre experience.
For starters, Alien: Romulus alumni Robert Bobroczkyi (who previously brought that film’s horrific Offspring to life during its most memorable sequence) plays the flick’s main antagonist, the Still Life version of Captain Clark. And though there was some obvious CGI involved in making the character’s peg-leg and nightmarish face more believable, Bobroczkyi’s monstrous performance and his natural 7’7″ frame helped to make that final chase sequence a clear highlight among this year’s genre offerings.
The film’s Texas-Chain-Saw-inspired “dinner” scene also features a freaky collection of less-aggressive Still Life creatures in the form of the Bearded Man, the Red-Headed Woman and, strangest of them all, the cheekily named “Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life” (who earned this title among fans and crewmembers as a reference to his apparent affinity for lamps).
While this was the first major horror outing for both Patrick Baynham (The Bearded Man) and Dana Mahmood (Archibald), Rhiannon Roberts has worked as a stunt performer in everything from Yellowjackets to HBO’s The Last of Us adaptation – which is probably why The Red-Headed Woman is the most active out of Clark’s impromptu “family.” That being said, the Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life is my personal favorite of the bunch simply because his anachronistic outfit suggests that the Backrooms phenomenon might be a lot older than the Async Foundation. I also love how hard he tries to be helpful with that little light of his!
That might be it for the Still Life entities, but I think horror fans will also be pleased to hear that the film’s Found Footage prologue stars none other than Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City star Avan Jogia as Naren Warne – and American Mary herself Katharine Isabelle also shows up in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo at Mary’s house party towards the middle of the story (though I have a feeling that she originally had a bigger part that was likely cut for time).
At the end of the day, Parsons’ Backrooms may have been an auteur-driven project motivated by the young director’s unique take on the classic creepypasta, but film has always been a collective artform, so it’s fun to see just how many talented performers it takes to bring this kind of supernatural nightmare to life in a way that connects with so many people.
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