Tuesday, September 12, 2023
Anya Taylor-Joy woke up a little after nine in the morning.
There was no alarm.
She slowly opened her eyes, spent a few seconds staring at the ceiling, and finally pushed the sheets aside. She pulled open the curtains in her bedroom, letting the morning light in, made the bed almost out of habit, and walked toward the kitchen.
She lived alone.
That meant that, whenever she didn't have a shoot, an interview, or some meeting scheduled too early, her mornings could be surprisingly quiet.
Yawning, she filled the kettle with water and set it to boil.
She didn't have to be awake since six. She didn't have to sit through makeup. There wasn't a van waiting downstairs to take her to a set.
She could have a morning that wasn't too busy. More or less, since she did have a few commitments in the afternoon.
She made some black tea and a couple pieces of toast. Then she sat down for breakfast.
No television, no music, and deliberately, no phone.
For almost forty minutes, the apartment remained completely silent.
Anya ate slowly, finished her tea, and let her mind wander from one subject to another. Several times, it wandered back to Lights Out.
She tried to ignore it.
She finished breakfast, carried everything into the kitchen, washed the cup, wiped the crumbs from the counter, and put everything back where it belonged.
Only then did she pick up her phone. She had managed to hold out for quite a while. Anya checked the time.
10:01 a.m.
She unlocked the screen. For half a second, she pretended she was going to check her messages. Then she opened YouTube.
"I can't help it," she murmured to herself.
She searched for Universal's Lights Out trailer.
She opened it, paused it, and looked at the numbers, which made her smile faintly.
9.2 million views, 691 thousand likes, and more than 30 thousand comments.
It hadn't even been twenty-four hours since the trailer had been uploaded.
'Good,' she thought, keeping the smile for another moment.
It wasn't exactly vanity. Or at least that was what she told herself.
Anya didn't need to check every hour how many people had seen her face on YouTube. She had worked long enough to know that internet numbers could be misleading.
But she also knew something else.
When you were the lead in a movie, especially one that hadn't reached theaters yet, there were very few ways to measure whether there was actually any anticipation surrounding it.
Views helped.
Comments helped even more.
It was the difference between thinking the marketing campaign was working and seeing proof that there were actual people waiting for the movie.
And nine million in less than a day was a very good sign.
Besides, this wasn't even the first trailer.
The previous one had passed forty million views.
If this one kept up the pace, it would probably end up somewhere between twenty-five and thirty-five million.
Not bad at all for the second trailer of a horror movie.
Anya scrolled down to the comments.
That was probably worse than checking the view count. But also considerably more entertaining.
The first one had more than five thousand likes.
@Mikeorsam:
Owen and Matt turned a 3-minute YouTube short into a Universal movie in ONE YEAR. These two don't sleep
Anya let out a small laugh through her nose. It was hard to believe, and in fact, she thought the short film was still a few weeks away from turning a year old.
@benjiin20:
Anya Taylor-Joy in horror again. We are so back.
Anya tilted her head, 'Looks like people still remember me in horror because of The Witch,' she thought, somewhat satisfied with her work from almost ten years ago.
@fionaED1:
The original short scared the hell out of me and somehow this looks even worse. In a good way.
@tryhus928:
Sarah Ashford looks great
@howardstuff788:
Elizabeth Ashford being cast as the mother is actually genius all we needed was Owen as the middle brother and the whole family would've been there lol
@Martha1985:
Imagine your son asks you to be in his horror movie and a year later Universal is putting your face in trailers worldwide. Why can't my son be like that?
Anya couldn't help but smile and kept reading.
@lukasdsu:
Anya Taylor-Joy + practical horror + whoever designed that creature = take my money.
@OrcryptopoxL:
This feels like the kind of horror movie that becomes massive because the concept is so simple. Turn off the lights = you're dead. Perfect.
Anya kept scrolling, reading several comments without lingering too long on any of them.
Some of the comments were about her. Others were about Sarah, the monster, Matt, the original short film, or Owen.
Until, after a few minutes, Anya stopped moving her finger.
She stared at the screen without paying attention to any particular comment.
She had to admit something.
When she had landed the lead role in Lights Out, she had never expected a six-million-dollar horror movie to end up surrounded by this much attention.
Of course, she knew where it came from.
She had watched the short film before accepting the project, and Owen was behind it. It would have been difficult not to know.
By that point, everything connected to him seemed to attract a lot of attention.
But one thing was knowing all of that when you signed a contract.
It was something entirely different to watch it turn into this.
On top of that, it would be the movie opening Fantastic Fest.
Anya set the phone down on the table for a moment.
Fantastic Fest wasn't simply another festival where you sent a horror movie hoping to pick up a few favorable reviews.
Within genre cinema, it was an important event. Directors, producers, specialized press, distributors, fans who genuinely lived for that kind of movie, and Lights Out wasn't going to be hidden away in some secondary screening in the middle of the week.
It was going to open the festival with a premiere organized by Universal, with plenty of press, the cast, probably Jason Blum, Owen, Jenna Ortega, and who knew who else...
And she would be the main face of the movie.
Anya looked back at the screen. For the first time, she seriously started wondering just how far this could go.
A hundred million dollars at the box office no longer seemed like a particularly crazy number.
In fact, she might be aiming too low.
The idea would have seemed difficult in the past. A small horror movie, shot for only a few million dollars, with a still-young director and based on an internet short film.
But this was Matt and Owen, the people behind the success of Paranormal Activity.
Then there was Owen with Good Will Hunting. Less than twenty million dollars in budget and more than three hundred million dollars at the box office.
And she knew the script and how everyone had worked on set. She had seen how seriously Sarah had taken the role despite being the sister of the person financing the entire thing.
The same went for Elizabeth, who had taken it completely seriously.
She trusted the movie.
Universal could fill the internet with ads. But after that, the movie itself still had to work.
Anya believed it would.
Her agent had told her the same thing a few days earlier, after receiving some internal campaign data.
They had done well negotiating bonuses if the movie reached certain box-office milestones.
Until then, The Witch was still probably the most important movie of her career in terms of her identity as an actress. It had given her prestige, recognition within the industry, and had been the project that made a lot of people learn her name.
Commercially, it had been small.
Not relative to its budget. It had cost four million dollars and grossed 40.4 million, an excellent ratio, but it was still small.
Lights Out, however, could become the biggest movie of her career up to that point from a purely commercial standpoint.
And then there were Owen's vlogs.
Her agent, and really, the agency in general, had already made it quite clear that whenever she had the opportunity, it was in her best interest to appear in them.
Anya understood perfectly well why.
If he filmed a vlog during Fantastic Fest, which was practically guaranteed, Anya could end up appearing in it for several minutes.
That was no small thing.
Sarah was probably the best example.
Before Lights Out, her only real industry credit had been a short film. Technically, she was still practically an unknown actress.
Even so, she had already passed one million followers on Instagram.
Some of that came from the short, of course. It had been extremely popular and well received.
But another fairly significant part came from appearing again and again in Owen's videos.
People knew who she was. They knew her personality. They recognized her voice, her jokes, even the dynamic she had with her brother.
It was a kind of exposure that no traditional interview could easily buy.
Leaving those thoughts behind, Anya closed YouTube and opened Instagram.
Her feed was relatively quiet. She didn't follow thousands of accounts.
She scrolled without paying much attention. A photo from a friend. A brand post. A movie announcement. A picture from a photographer she had worked with months earlier.
Anya left a couple of likes almost automatically and kept scrolling.
Until she stopped.
Owen Ashford.
He had posted something a few hours earlier.
It wasn't a photograph.
It was a video.
Anya frowned slightly and tapped the screen to turn on the sound.
The first shot showed a light gray wall covered in black horizontal lines.
Height measurements could be seen along one side.
Standing in front of the wall were five men lined up next to one another.
Each of them held a white sign with a number in the center: 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5.
Anya blinked. 'What?' she thought.
It looked like a police lineup. And not a cheap imitation, either.
The lighting, the framing, the wardrobe, even the shadows cast against the wall all looked like a real production.
For a second, she watched seriously.
Was it a movie?
A teaser?
With Owen, it wouldn't have been especially strange for him to announce a project that way.
The video changed shots and showed Owen dressed as a detective.
[So, do you recognize any of these men?] Owen asked in a serious tone.
The question was directed at a girl standing beside him.
It took Anya barely a second to recognize her: Maya Hawke.
[I was hiding in the bathroom stall, so I didn't see his face. But I heard him. He was singing along to the music at the bar,] Maya replied, or at least the character she was playing did.
'It looks serious,' Anya thought.
Up to that point, in fact, it looked like a serious movie. The way Owen spoke and Maya's uneasy expression made it seem like something that could easily belong in a crime film.
'His next movie?' Anya wondered. She remembered some comments Owen had made that had appeared in several headlines, about his next movie after Good Will Hunting.
But supposedly it was something related to superheroes.
[Do you remember what he was singing?] Owen asked, keeping his focused expression.
Maya thought for a second. [I think it was that song... 'I Want It That Way'?]
[Backstreet Boys. I'm familiar,] Owen replied immediately.
[Okay.]
He nodded once, as if he had just received a particularly useful clue.
Then he pressed a button beside him and leaned slightly toward the microphone connected to the room where the five suspects were standing.
[Number one, could you please sing the opening to 'I Want It That Way'?]
Anya blinked. 'What?'
The camera immediately cut to suspect number one.
Now that she could see him better, Anya recognized him.
Caleb.
One of Owen's friends. He had also appeared in Good Will Hunting.
Caleb looked toward the glass with an expression of complete confusion. [Really?]
He received no answer. He stood still for another second, as if waiting for someone to tell him it was a joke.
Nothing.
Finally, he nodded in resignation. [Okay...]
He took a breath and sang, [🎵 You are... my fire 🎵]
Anya let out a small laugh through her nose. This was suddenly losing its seriousness.
The camera returned to Owen. He didn't seem to find anything strange about it.
He simply turned toward Maya, looking for some kind of reaction.
Maya shook her head.
Owen immediately went back to the microphone. [Number two. Keep it going.]
The camera switched to the second man.
Gaten Matarazzo.
Gaten looked first at Caleb and then toward the glass, clearly confused as to how a police lineup had somehow turned into this.
Even so, he continued, [🎵 The one desireeee 🎵]
[Number three,] Owen requested.
The third suspect was a young blond man with light-colored eyes: Curry.
Curry was still holding the sign with the number three as he sang with an expression that was difficult to describe, somewhere between concentration and wondering what he was doing with his life, [🎵 Believe 🎵. 🎵 When I say 🎵]
The camera returned to Owen, and something had changed.
The professional seriousness was still there. More or less.
Now a smile was starting to grow across his face.
Owen raised one hand slightly. [¡Number four!]
The fourth suspect picked up where the others had left off. [🎵 I want it that way 🎵]
Anya didn't recognize the actor.
But she didn't have much time to wonder who he was.
Because Owen had just stopped behaving like a detective.
He leaned even farther toward the microphone and, now completely immersed in the song, took control as if he had suddenly become the director of a choir. [🎵 ¡Tell me why! 🎵]
All five men answered at the same time.
[🎵 Ain't nothing but a heartache 🎵]
Anya started smiling.
The best part was the suspects' attitude.
They weren't dancing.
They didn't look particularly excited.
They were simply five men standing in front of a police lineup wall, still holding numbers against their chests, singing surprisingly well while exchanging awkward glances with one another.
As if none of them understood exactly when their interrogation had reached this point.
The camera returned to Owen.
For him, on the other hand, there was no doubt anymore.
He was completely into it.
[🎵 ¡TELL ME WHY! 🎵] he sang much louder.
[🎵 Ain't nothin' but a mistake 🎵] all five replied.
Owen pointed toward the end of the line. But now he didn't even speak normally anymore. [🎵 Now number five... 🎵]
He sang the words to the same rhythm as the song.
The camera moved to the fifth suspect: Joe Keery.
Anya had recently read that he would be one of the leads in Owen's upcoming series, Black Mirror.
Joe held his sign with the number five and then decided to take it completely seriously. [🎵 I never wanna hear you say... 🎵]
The difference was immediate.
Joe sang it with feeling. His expression changed, he stretched the words slightly, and for a moment, he seemed to completely forget that he was playing a murder suspect.
Owen reacted from the other side of the glass. [¡Woo!]
Anya burst out laughing.
The other four no longer needed any instructions either.
They all continued together.
[🎵 I want it that way 🎵]
The song ended, and the camera returned to Owen.
He was still leaning over the microphone, one hand resting near the button. He slowly straightened up. [Oh, chills. Literal chills,] he said with a smile, shaking both hands in front of himself as if he had genuinely just witnessed an extraordinary performance.
Anya laughed again.
Then the camera returned to Maya.
She was not in the same mood.
At all.
[It was number five.]
The camera moved closer to her face. Any trace of amusement was gone.
Her jaw was tense, and she was staring directly toward the lineup.
[Number five killed my brother.]
There was a silence. Even Anya stopped smiling.
The camera returned to Owen. The satisfaction immediately vanished from his face, and he seemed to remember that he was a cop.
[Oh, my God… I forgot about that part.]
Cut to black.
Anya stared at the screen for a couple of seconds.
She hadn't expected that.
At all.
The video automatically started playing again from the beginning, and instead of scrolling to the next post, Anya simply let it continue.
The five men appeared once again in front of the lineup wall.
This time she already knew what was coming, and precisely because of that, she started noticing other things.
Caleb's expression when Owen asked him to sing.
Gaten glancing sideways at the others.
Curry trying to keep a straight face while holding the number three.
The way Joe got far too invested in his part.
And Owen, too.
The first time, she had been too busy trying to understand what the hell she was watching.
Now she could appreciate the shift much better.
At first, he genuinely seemed like a detective. His posture, his tone, even those first questions to Maya.
And then...
[🎵 ¡Tell me why! 🎵]
Anya laughed again.
It was exactly the kind of comedy video you found on Instagram.
A simple concept with a punchline at the end.
Except those videos were usually filmed with a phone, two friends, and somewhere in your house.
Not this one.
This had professional actors, a set, wardrobe, lighting, multiple cameras, and very good editing.
Maya playing a woman whose brother had just been murdered while five possible suspects sang Backstreet Boys.
All of it just to reach one line.
[Oh, my God... I forgot about that part.]
Anya let out another small laugh. 'It's really good,' she thought as she liked the post.
Anya let it start a third time.
Now she did feel a little ridiculous.
'Fine. One more.'
She paid particular attention to Joe.
But there was something else that started to feel strange after watching it several times.
It was the first time she had ever seen Owen do something like this.
Not that she knew him particularly well on a personal level.
In fact, during Lights Out, she had ended up spending considerably more time with Sarah and Elizabeth than with him.
They were there.
They were filming.
They spent hours together on set, eating on set, and talking between takes.
Owen had barely been around.
Not enough for Anya to say that she really knew him.
Her other major point of reference was Good Will Hunting.
There, Owen was the complete opposite of this.
A brilliant young man with emotional problems, a disastrous childhood, and a considerable amount of bottled-up anger.
Then came that final scene with Bryan Cranston.
Anya still remembered thinking that Owen cried in an uncomfortably convincing way.
Nothing cinematically beautiful.
Just very realistic.
So seeing him now screaming: Tell me why, while pointing at five murder suspects was unexpected.
He could do comedy.
Until then, Anya had never really thought of Owen as someone funny on camera.
In the vlogs, yes, with his deadpan comments, but acting comedy was something else.
Here, his timing was good.
Anya let the video finish for a fourth time and opened the comments.
It already had almost two million likes and more than 10.5 million views. She also noticed that Owen hadn't written anything in the caption. He had only tagged Gaten, Joe, Maya, Caleb, and the other actor she hadn't recognized, whose name was Cooper.
The numbers were already extremely high considering it had only been posted a few hours earlier.
@jennaortega:
"Oh my god I forgot about that part" 🤣
@milesonfilm:
Why is this shot better than half the comedy shows on streaming 😭
@Johasnd2:
The fact that #5 knew he was going to get arrested, still put in his best effort to finish the chorus
@Joekerry (replying to @Johasnd2):
Worth it
@Kayon.x:
No 1: surprised but interested in where this is going
No 2: super confused and just wants to go home
No 3: also confused and doesn't know whether he should keep going or stop
No 4: singing like there is deep emotional memories to song
No 5: Knows he's guilty but ain't letting go his moment to shine
@sanjankaicker:
Maya's face at the end is what makes the entire Thing
@Fylenangelos:
Bro cried for two hours in Good Will Hunting just to scream TELL ME WHY two months later.
@Redterris:
For some reasons i have watched this like 20 times in repeat.😂😂😂
@frankiend:
Number 3 sings like an angel
@curry.barker (replying to @frankiend):
thanks, man
@WilllOsthar:
"Oh my god, I forgot about that part" makes it just even more hilarious and saying next to the woman lol
@Rachelsmokl:
How much did they spend on the set? And the actors, the cameras, the editing...?
@Cutzleonard2 (replying to @Rachelsmokl):
The fact that it looks like a real police drama makes the joke 10x better.
@sarahfanpage:
Sarah please tell your brother to make an actual comedy
…
Anya paused for a second on that one.
It wasn't a terrible idea. If he could make such a short video this funny, he could probably do something in comedy.
Now she remembered that he was the one who had made One Minute Time Machine, the short film that had also been very funny, although Owen hadn't acted in it.
After several minutes, she realized she had scrolled down way too far.
She had started by reading the top comments, and now she was getting into arguments about which of the five had sung the best.
Others were saying that nobody had expected this from Owen's account, while some were asking him to release another sketch.
She went back up.
She could just leave a like and move on, but she had watched the video more than three times. It had earned a comment.
Anya started typing.
Deleted it and wrote it again.
Finally, she left:
@anyataylorjoy:
I spent a solid 10 seconds seriously thinking this was a real police movie and somehow ended up singing number five in my head…
She posted the comment.
Not even ten seconds had passed before the first like appeared.
Then another.
Anya immediately locked her phone.
No.
She had already spent enough time on social media.
Although, as she set it down on the table, there was still a small smile on her face.
She definitely hadn't expected to see that side of Owen.
Anya wasn't the only actress who ended up coming across the video.
Sadie Sink saw it several hours later.
She had taken a nap, and when she woke up around one in the afternoon, she picked up her phone while still half-asleep.
She opened Instagram, scrolled past a couple of posts, and eventually found Owen dressed as a detective standing beside Maya Hawke.
At first, she watched carefully.
Then the five suspects appeared.
Then Owen asked them to sing.
Sadie started laughing before they even reached the chorus.
It wasn't the first time she had seen that kind of humor from him.
During the Black Mirror shoot they had shared, she had already discovered that Owen enjoyed that sort of humor.
When the video ended, Sadie opened the comments.
She didn't think about it too much.
@sadiesink:
I know a police officer. I can confirm this is exactly how a police lineup works.
The comment began collecting likes almost immediately.
Later, another familiar name appeared.
Jacob Elordi.
He had recognized several of the people standing in the lineup and, after watching the video twice, decided to leave his own assessment.
@jacobelordi:
No. 1 & No. 3 — best voices.
No. 5 — best overall performance.
And I wasn't invited?
Owen replied not long after.
@owenashford:
You were in Australia when we did this...
Gaten's response came a few minutes later.
@gatenmatarazzo:
1, 3 and 5?? What about number 2? He did an excellent job.
Gaten, naturally, had been number two.
That opened up another small chain of replies.
People defending number two.
Others saying Joe had won because of his performance.
Some insisting that number three had been the best singer.
Plenty of others were discovering Curry and Cooper, who had gained a lot of followers thanks to Owen tagging everyone.
What had started as a comedy video barely over a minute long began to take on a life of its own.
Over the following days, it appeared everywhere: TikTok, YouTube Shorts, Twitter, meme accounts, film accounts, and more.
The format helped enormously.
You didn't need to know who Owen was, or any of the others.
You didn't need any previous context either.
The more it was shared, the less it depended on the fame of the people appearing in it.
By September 18, just six days after it was posted, the original reel had already passed 52 million views on Instagram.
By far, it was the most-watched reel Owen had posted up to that point.
It had also passed 5 million likes, accumulated more than 100,000 comments, and been shared or sent through direct messages more than 2 million times.
Fifty million views on Instagram didn't mean exactly the same thing as fifty million on YouTube.
But it was still enormous.
Especially for a video posted less than a week earlier.
The reel had reached far more people than Owen's own follower base.
By then, it had stopped being simply Owen's new video.
It had become an internet meme.
There were GIFs of Owen leaning toward the microphone and shouting:
TELL ME WHY!
Another especially popular one showed his expression when Maya says that number five killed her brother.
Recreations also began to appear.
And the song itself started becoming associated with that sequence all over again.
Entertainment media began picking it up.
First, it was websites specializing in internet culture.
Then film publications.
Finally, even more traditional outlets devoted short pieces to the unexpected success.
Some headlines were direct:
[Owen Ashford's bizarre Backstreet Boys police lineup is taking over Instagram.]
Others highlighted the contrast:
[From Good Will Hunting to Backstreet Boys: Owen Ashford shows an unexpected comedic side.]
There were also articles focused on the cast:
[Maya Hawke, Joe Keery, Caleb McLaughlin, Curry Barker, and Gaten Matarazzo join Owen Ashford in viral police-lineup sketch.]
One inevitably asked:
[Should Owen Ashford make a comedy next?]
The internet, naturally, decided that it wanted more.
Owen was reading one of those comments when he leaned back in his chair.
Make another one.
Below it were hundreds of replies asking for the same thing.
Owen smiled faintly. 'Soon...' he thought.
The reel hadn't just helped him show a completely different range from Good Will Hunting.
It had also been a massive success for his own account.
Because the video had reached far beyond his usual audience, in less than a week he had gained around 820,000 new followers.
His account had already passed 22 million.
Not bad for a video he had shot in a relatively short amount of time compared to making a short film or a feature.
The next one would be comedy too.
Only this time, it would be much simpler.
Him and Jenna.
Nothing else.
Owen set his phone aside and looked toward one end of the desk.
There were two stapled pages.
Literally two.
That was the entire script.
He had printed it that morning because, for some reason, physically handing it to Jenna felt more serious than sending her a file through a message.
The scene was one of his favorites from Ted 2.
A couple's argument that began relatively normally and gradually escalated into something very intense, but funny.
Naturally, Ted didn't exist in this world.
So Owen could use it.
He had adapted the scene to remove the teddy bear and turn the character into just a normal man played by him.
Surprisingly, he had barely needed to change anything.
The structure worked perfectly between two people.
In fact, there was only one line that couldn't survive the change.
One where, in the middle of the argument, Ted's partner ended up insulting him specifically for being a teddy bear.
That one had to go.
The rest was practically untouched.
And if he ever decided to bring Ted to theaters, that wasn't a problem either.
First, he would have to make the first movie.
Then see if it worked, and only after that think about a sequel.
By then, he could reuse the scene exactly as it was, but with the teddy bear.
It could even become a meta reference.
Owen picked up the two pages again. He read a few lines.
It still worked.
Especially with Jenna.
The two of them playing a couple in an argument that became very tense and very funny at the same time.
Knock, knock.
Owen raised his head.
He put the pages inside the drawer. "Come in," he said.
The door opened and Curry stepped inside with a bag slung over his shoulder, then closed it behind him.
"Hey."
"Hey. Sit down," Owen said, pointing toward one of the chairs in front of the desk.
By that point, his relationship with Curry had moved quite far away from that first strictly professional meeting.
They had worked together on Curve.
Then on the sketch, where Curry had acted, showing the experience he already had with comedy sketches from YouTube.
Matt, Tyler, and Eric had also spent quite a lot of time with him over the past few weeks.
Their similar ages helped.
So did the fact that all of them shared more or less the same interests: they could spend three hours talking about movies, practical effects, or cameras, then waste another four playing video games, drinking beer, and arguing about something completely irrelevant.
Curry had integrated into the group pretty well.
That was exactly why Owen knew this wasn't a casual visit.
If Curry had simply wanted to talk or show him something unimportant, he probably would have done it while they were all hanging out at someone's house.
He wouldn't have asked to speak in private.
Curve was already finished.
They had wrapped up practically everything the day before.
The edit had turned out better than Owen expected.
Curry and the editor had done an excellent job with the pacing and sound.
So when Curry had told him he wanted to show him something, Owen had agreed, fairly curious.
Now, seeing him sitting across from him with the bag still resting on his lap, that curiosity only grew.
"All right," Owen said, interlacing his fingers. "You said you wanted to show me something."
"Yeah," Curry nodded, his voice somewhat nervous, just like the first time Owen had met him.
Then he opened the bag and pulled something out.
Owen recognized it immediately. A complete, bound script.
Owen managed to read the title.
'Obsession?' he thought, raising an eyebrow.
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