Youth In Revolt
ECHO BOOMERS Millennials take a baseball bat to the system in Seth Savoy’s Insta-heist thriller.
If you remember the ’80s, you might be too old for Echo Boomers. “With the older generation, it’s going to be a mixed bag, I think,” laughs director Seth Savoy, “but that’s sort of the point.” A fizzy mix of Ocean’s Eleven and Fight Club, Echo Boomers sees a gang of millennials turn to crime after coming out of uni with no jobs, no houses and massive student debt. It’s an urgent, angry heist movie based on a real Chicago spree that Savoy read about while worrying over his own bank account after leaving film school.
“Weirdly enough, I could really relate to their personal frustrations,” he says. “These were kids who played by the rules their whole lives and were suddenly in this massive amount of debt. There was all this angst and all this rage building up in our generation, and I wanted to tap into that.”
Hanging his script off the headlines, Echo Boomers grew into a film about much more than just pent-up problems – with a string of home invasions driving a story of the growing cultural gulf between Gen Y and the post-war parents they blamed for messing everything up.
After Michael Shannon rescued the project from development hell (playing the shady fence that gives the gang their next hits), Savoy cast Alex Pettyfer,
Hayley Law and Patrick Schwarzenegger before planning a fast-paced shoot that squeezed in days before lockdown.
“I wanted it to feel like social media,” he says. “I wanted it to feel like a constant stream of information, all quick-quick-quick. We shot in 26 days, running over into every night, and that energy really pays off, I think.”
Using Snapchat-speed stills and overlayed screen scribbles, Echo Boomers moves fast, but it’s the slow-mo shots of wanton destruction that stand out – with wide-eyed graduate Lance (Schwarzenegger) getting sucked into the orbit of Ellis (Pettyfer) watching him smash up a boomer’s house for the first time. The film’s fancy mansion sets were decorated with crystal chandeliers, priceless art and expensive furniture, and the cast was given free rein to cause as much damage as possible.
“It was as fun as it sounds!” laughs Savoy. “I found it really interesting to see how the actors handled it, too. I literally just handed them a baseball bat and told them to go for it. Some of them absolutely got lost in that and loved it – they almost blacked out having so much fun. But others… they broke one thing and had to stop. They said it felt too wrong. It was great to watch them all work through that.
“We wanted the crimes to look fun,” he acknowledges. “The whole goal was to get the audience thinking, ‘If
I was in that room I might do it too.’ If you get it, you’ll get it.” PB
ETA | 11 JANUARY / ECHO BOOMERS OPENS IN CINEMAS AND ON DEMAND NEXT MONTH.