Joel Edgerton Talks Us Through a Scene From His Creepy New Thriller 'The Gift'

Aussie actor Joel Edgerton is best known for his tough-guy turns in such dramas as Zero Dark Thirty, Animal Kingdom, and Warrior. But the 41–year-old has also long had a penchant for work behind the camera, having started out collaborating with his brother (and fellow actor) Nash Edgerton, writing, producing, starring in, and even directing a handful of short films in the late '90s and early '00s. They got into DIY filmmaking out of simple necessity: “[They] gave people the opportunity to see us, and it would give us more work,” Joel tells Yahoo Movies.

The shorts also gave Edgerton a passion for moviemaking. Last year, he wrote the story for the Guy Pearce-Robert Pattinson drama The Rover, and this weekend, he makes his full-length directorial debut with The Gift, which he also wrote. Starring Edgerton, Jason Bateman, and Rebecca Hall, The Gift has been quietly receiving accolades, praised for its new approach to suburban terror and a surprisingly clever twist ending.

In it, Edgerton plays Gordo, a guy who’s trying to become close with a handsome married couple who just moved into an elegant, modern house on a hill. We recently met up with Edgerton at the same Mulholland Drive home where the film was shot, and asked him to talk us through one of the film’s big moments (in the video above), in which Gordo and Simon have an awkward and chilling face-off. “I want to make the audience feel like they’re turning a series of corners,” Edgerton tells us, “and around the corners there’s something they feel they’re familiar with — and yet there’s some surprise waiting for them.“

Read this excerpt from our interview with Edgerton as he sets the stage for the above scene:

Joel Edgerton: There’s a scene in the movie [above] where the character of Simon, played by Jason Bateman, begrudgingly goes to try and make peace with my character, Gordo. Gordo is someone he didn’t treat so well in high school and it’s now 25 years later. They’ve run into each other and Simon and his wife Robyn, played by Rebecca Hall, have had these overbearing visits by Gordo. As a result, they’ve broken up with him as an acquaintance.

Gordo somewhat receded into the shadows and it’s left way for Robyn to discover things about her husband. When she finds that out she encourages him to go and hold out the olive branch.

In this scene Jason’s character goes, pent up with a lot of resentment and years of entitlement. But he tries in his own clunky way to apologize — a person who has probably never really apologized to anybody for anything in his life. The olive branch is swatted out of his hand in an odd way when Gordo suggests to him that this may have come a little bit too late. And something very surprising happens as a result. …

In the movie this question of your ability to look back and acknowledge the past is a very rich one. There’s a difference between doing something wrong as a child — that’s one thing — but then what do you do in the aftermath of that? Are you big enough, even all those years later, to look back and go, “Hey, I did a bad thing to you and I’m sorry.” In our film, Simon [Bateman] represents people who say, “I don’t need to look back. I’m not responsible for your downfall.” He has the opportunity to make good in the movie and he denies that opportunity. And that’s why we get this feeling that something else is in store for him.

There are building blocks of suspense in this movie. I want to make the audience feel like they’re turning a series of corners and around the corners there’s something they feel they’re familiar with and yet there’s some surprise waiting for them. I wanted it to have a social resonance, a movie that talks about the kind of people we are, the kind of roles we played in school, and whether we know the person we live with. Who are our partners and what’s in their past?

In Gordo, I wanted a villain that could be in any one of our lives — that guy from high school that we maybe didn’t treat so well. He exists in the world in many people’s lives. The more normal the elements of this movie the more relatable they are — and hopefully more terrifying.

Find out what surprises The Gift has in store for you when it opens this Friday.

Watch the trailer for 'The Gift’: