Black Box Stars Talk the Terror of Their New Blumhouse Thriller

While many movie theaters around the world might be closed, Amazon Prime Video and Blumhouse Productions are still making sure that horror fans will be getting all-new stories that get under your skin with their Welcome to the Blumhouse slate of films. Kicking off on October 6th, fans will be getting four new films in October, which includes the unsettling Black Box. The new film stars Mamoudou Athie and Phylicia Rashad, who both recently detailed that, while the subject matter of the film might be disturbing, they both approached the experience from a storytelling standpoint. Black Box premieres on Amazon Prime Video on October 6th.

In Black Box, after losing his wife and his memory in a car accident, a single father (Athie) undergoes an agonizing experimental treatment that causes him to question who he really is. While it may have been challenging to portray a character who is struggling with his own memory, Athie approached the role from a macro level.

“I was fortunate to have teachers that made acting a very practical process, so it was just about finding out what world he lives in and specifying what that world is, and then you can play from there,” Athie revealed to ComicBook.com. “If you know what kind of sandbox you’re in and [director] Emmanuel [Osei-Kuffour Jr.] and I talked at length and, fortunately, if you have a good script, the groundwork is laid down there for you, so you just have to go moment by moment, beat by beat, brick by brick. I think the thing that was important for me to key into was how frustrating it must be to not know anything about who you are and what you’ve done. Just the thought of that is just heartbreaking and it’s also so enraging, so that was really the key in there, just to empathize with that.”

As far as Rashad’s involvement, she was mostly drawn to the disturbing story based on the characters and their connections as opposed to the ultimate tone of the piece.

“I didn’t think of it as a genre film, and I wasn’t looking at that when I read the script,” Rashad detailed. “I was looking at the story and not really putting it in one classification or another. The story is good and the script tells the story very well, and that was a decision-making point for me.”

Black Box lands on Amazon Prime Video on October 6th.

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