Director finds ‘core nugget’ of ‘Unseen’ to make her own
Horror fans who enjoy the suspense of “Unseen” can thank the Linden Hills Co-op and Walker Art Center in Minneapolis.
That’s where director Yoko Okumura, whose “Unseen” is now available via video on demand (it’ll stream on MGM+ this May), cut her moviemaking teeth — with a VHS camera given to her by her grandmother. She hauled it everywhere, including the co-op, where mom Yuko ran the sushi counter.
“I was the girl who brought the camera to school or Lake Harriet or the co-op, running around interviewing people,” said Okumura, 35, whose father, Shohaku, was head monk at the Minnesota Zen Meditation Center.
“I was a bit of a rebel and definitely a pop culture lover,” said Okumura. “I was always taking City Pages and snipping out movie showtimes and posters and making collages. The impetus of me asking my parents to get the internet in our house was me wanting to look up old ‘X-Files’ episodes, being a fangirl.”
All of that paid off in “Unseen,” in which a nearly blind woman named Emily escapes from her abusive lover in a remote cabin but can’t see well enough to return to civilization. For help, she randomly dials Sam, a clerk in a convenience store several states away, and asks her to be her “eyes.” While Emily uses her phone to show where she is, Sam tries to describe what she sees and guide Emily to help.
Although “Unseen” is bypassing theaters, it’s a big deal — it’s from Blumhouse, the studio behind last year’s smash “M3GAN” as well as the recent “Halloween” sequels. Okumura, who has directed episodes of “The Bold Type” and “Good Trouble,” said a combination of elements made “Unseen” the ideal feature debut.
“When I was consuming TV I loved, it was those late-night shows on Fox, ‘Stargate SG-1’ or ‘X-Files.’ The nerdy stuff,” said Okumura, who started figuring out how to make “Unseen” personal when she read the script. “Two women coming together in this unlikely friendship to fight back against an abuser, that was a core nugget of an emotional story I could make my own,” she said.
It became even more personal when she cast two leads who are — like Kyotoborn Okumura — Japanese American. The script didn’t specify ethnicity but knowing that Emily (Midori Francis) was described as being in medicine, a field many of her peers gravitate toward, Okumura wanted an Asian American performer.
For Sam, watching TV came in handy again.
“I wanted Jolene Purdy from the beginning, from the time I saw her on ‘White Lotus,’ ” said Okumura of the actor who played a pregnant hotel employee in the HBO series’ first season. “And she just happened to be Japanese American, too.”
Blumhouse enthusiastically supported the casting, but Purdy was skeptical. Okumura said, “(Purdy) told me when she heard Midori was in the running for the other role, she thought, ‘I’m never getting hired. They won’t hire both of us.’ It’s that ‘only one’ mentality, and it happens: people hedging their bets with a one-of-each kind of diversity.”
Okumura had her own doubts on the set, wondering if her crew members would take direction from anyone who looked like her.
“I had internalized a lot of ‘Maybe I’m too feminine, too girly,’ ” worried Okumura, who has acidgreen hair and matching nails. “I worried the neon colors and glitter would be a detriment to me: ‘Do I need to wear all black to be taken seriously?’ So it really surprised me how the crew and executives embraced who I was authentically, wearing my glittery pink hat to the set.”
Okumura’s next project, if things work out, is a script she wrote that could not be more personal: It’s about a girl who investigates a mystery when she and her dad, a Buddhist monk, move to Minnesota.