Significant Other Stars Open Up About the Hiking Trip From Hell

By Patrick Cavanaugh

A walk in the woods is meant to be a relaxing experience, allowing you to escape from the stress and tension of your everyday life, but in the case of the new Paramount+ film Significant Other, heading into the wilderness is only the start of a horrifying ordeal. While getting lost or being vulnerable to the elements are risks that are par for the course, stars Maika Monroe and Jake Lacy are tasked with examining all manner of mysterious obstacles, immersing them in a nightmarish scenario. Monroe is at least somewhat well-versed in the perplexing adventure, as she previously collaborated with writers/directors Dan Berk and Robert Olsen for their film Villains. Significant Other premieres on Paramount+ on October 7th.

"I do love Dan and Bobby so much, and so when they came to me with their next project, I was really hoping that the script was going to be good because ... well, it'd probably be awkward if I was like, 'No, this is terrible,'" Monroe shared with ComicBook.com about her interest in the project. "But also, I really wanted to work with them again. I read it and just I really fell in love with it. And knowing them and their style and their humor, it just came through on the page, and there's so many twists and turns. Even reading it, I was like, 'Where are we going?' which is so fun. And I love that in movies, I love great twists."

Significant Other follows a young couple (Maika Monroe & Jake Lacy) who take a remote backpacking trip through the Pacific Northwest, but things take a dark turn when they realize they may not be alone.

For Lacy, there was a slightly different learning curve when it came to knowing which scenes were meant to be authentic and which scenes were heightened to the point of intentionally being humorous.

"The nerves are, 'How do you blend these genres?' One, inherently, is built on tension and one is built on building and releasing tension. So how do you thread the needle? How do you walk that path and have both?" Lacy recalled of his initial reactions to the project. "And also, reading it and going, 'This part's funny, right? I'm laughing. This is funny, right?' And then talking to Dan and Bobby and tiptoeing toward that to be like, 'That part's ridiculous, right? That's nuts?' And they were like, 'Oh, yeah. No, that's funny.' I was like, 'Okay, cool. Good, good, good. Okay. We're all on the same page here.'"

He continued, "So you just have to trust them and their vision. And then, also, that they were so free and collaborative where I could say, 'Hey, can we do this thing? Can we just nudge it that way?' To be like, 'The integrity of a story is there and this thing's still happening, but I think there's a little thing to be mined here.' They were so cool and open to it. And Maika would push back, but they were great about it. Yeah, it was fantastic. It was wonderful."

Monroe's breakout roles came in The Guest and It Follows, two films that were unveiled in 2014. Despite the acclaim earned by those films, and the attention Monroe specifically received, she shied away from the genre in the wake of those releases, though more recent years have seen her make a complete embrace of unsettling endeavors. The actor went on to detail her connection to stories in this world and that career trajectory.

"Starting out as an actor, I'm trying to survive and feed myself and pay my rent. So a script called It Follows came across my desk and I was like, 'Oh, this seems f-cking weird, but I'm going to do it,'" the actor admitted. "And then it was incredibly successful and changed the course of it all. But I think around then, The Witch and The Babadook also came out. I think there was a real shift in the horror genre where everything was becoming more elevated and really complex characters."

She added, "I grew up watching horror. I love horror. I love how it made you feel when you went to a movie theater. And this feeling of being absolutely ... It's just so fun. And that's why I think people love it and why people want to go to a movie theater to see something because it's so intense. It's by no means any sort of plan. It's just these movies that I've done, particularly in that genre, turned out to be quite successful. So maybe I'm a good luck charm, I don't know. But no, I'm super lucky."

Significant Other premieres on Paramount+ on October 7th.

Are you looking forward to the new film? Let us know in the comments or contact Patrick Cavanaugh directly on Twitter to talk all things Star Wars and horror!  

Trending Now: