No Exit Director Damien Power Reveals the Film's Biggest Influences

Hulu and 20th Century Studios are bringing the thrills next month with the debut of the new film No Exit. Based on the novel by Taylor Adams, No Exit tells the story of a young woman who gets stuck with a few other folks inside a rest stop during a snowstorm. She soon discovers one of them is a dangerous criminal with a young child locked in their vehicle, but has no idea which of them is the culprit. The trailer, which debuted Tuesday morning, sets up a whodunit with dangerous stakes, but director Damien Power didn't necessarily look to classic mystery tales for guidance. While speaking to ComicBook.com, Power said that "pressure cooker thrillers" like Green Room and Prisoners were the biggest influences when crafting his newest film.

"I didn't really look to whodunits," Power explained. "I looked more to contained thrillers, ones that I felt were really grounded. So some of the films I looked at were things like Prisoners or Green Room, particularly."

"Green Room's such a good film, with its contained setting and the way that it's just incredibly suspenseful," he continued. "But also films that were set in the snow, some thrillers that were set in the snow. So some films that might not be tonally the same like Fargo or A Simple Plan or even The Grey. But there's something about those films that are set in the snow, whether it's the cold or it's the stark white. It just throws human behavior into this sharp relief, and I feel like those films become this endurance test of the characters."

Power went on to dig into why those types of "contained thrillers" have always appealed to him. Rather than taking characters on a journey and letting them evolve, these stories force characters into situations where they have to rely on and explore who they already are.

"So they're constantly asking the characters, 'Who are you?' Or 'Who are you now when we throw this situation at you?' And that's one of the key drivers of this film, that all of the characters have their secrets, and the film really puts them in this pressure cooker situation," the director said. "So I think that's one of the things about contained thrillers that really appeals to me, this idea that it's not that the characters change when they go on some big journey. There isn't time for that. But it's more like true character is revealed under intense pressure, and I love those films."

No Exit debuts exclusively on Hulu February 25th.