Latency Director James Croke Discusses His Upcoming Horror Film

Latency stars Sasha Luss as an agoraphobic video game tester who’s offered a chance to demo a cutting-edge neural interface. The Omnia radically enhances her programming skills but at an alarming cost. Writer/director James Croke explores the dangers of connectivity in his debut feature film.

He enjoys genre “mashups” but wanted to make it clear he’s not “anti-technology” or a fan of “happy endings.” Croke blends sci-fi, horror, and psychological themes into a twisted narrative where nothing is as it seems. Please watch above or read below for our complete exclusive interview.

Latency Is Croke’s First Feature Film

MovieWeb: You’ve worked as an art director and production designer. Why write and direct Latency as your first feature film?

James Croke: It’s funny because I’ve been writing for a long time. So, in my mind, it’s not my first feature film, but certainly my first film directing. I don’t know why it was my first one. It was the first one I could get made. It was the first one I could get a budget for and be allowed the privilege of directing a film. Maybe it hit the right moment in the zeitgeist. People decided to back it for whatever reason they did. I’m glad.

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MW: I have a question about how you feel about it philosophically. I thought about Elon Musk and Neuralink. The idea of a computer in your brain controlling everything. Where you never have to leave your apartment. Is that what inspired you?

James Croke: Not specifically Neuralink, but I was just reading an article in New Scientist, which is like Scientific American. There was an article about a brain-computer interface or electroencephalography device, which allows a computer to sort of monitor your brain activity. I thought that that would be interesting in relation to gaming.

James Croke: In my past, I used to work for a games company that developed games for cell phones. They’d often bring in people to test the games. I just thought that was such a cool job. So then, when I read this article about that technology, I just matched the two together. That began the process of coming up with Latency. But yeah, it hasn’t escaped my attention, the Neuralink stuff. I was pleasantly surprised and happy that it all happened simultaneously because it kind of proves my theory.

Unlocking a Damaged Mind in Latency

MW: So philosophically, is Omnia, the product in your film, a bad thing that could possibly lead to devastating consequences, like what happens to Hana? Or is it a positive, and the movie is just a fantasy?

James Croke:I’m not anti-technology in any way. I’m all for advancement in technology and computing. I think, especially medically, there’s a lot of great stuff about brain-computer interfaces that are very, very useful. Even just helping people who are paraplegic to regain movement or be able to control things that they can’t otherwise control. The question that I posed to myself while writing the script, you talk about the philosophy of it.

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James Croke: When I write, I sort of try to pose myself a question. And so, for me, the question was, okay, so if this technology exists, and it can read your mind. What happens when it gets to read the mind of someone who is already damaged? The character of Hana has experienced trauma. She’s had generational trauma. I pose the question as I write. What happens when someone who has this trauma has their mind unlocked by the computer? What would the computer see, and what would it let out? If you’ve suppressed something, would it unlock that and allow it out into the real world?

Latency Is a Genre Mashup

MW: That leads into the next question. Hana’s agoraphobia is the horror aspect of the film. She’s seeing her mother and herself as a child. But then you have the sci-fi thriller part of it. I saw the film cold. The beginning with the monsters and her playing the game completely surprised me. You’re kind of going through this middle line of genres. Are you making a horror, sci-fi film, or both?

James Croke: When people have asked me that in the past, it’s the question that I’ve been struggling to answer the most throughout the entire process of having written it to now. My answer at the moment is it’s a genre mashup. I’m taking horror, sci-fi, and a psychological thriller and smushing them all together into one story. I like genre mashups. They’re good fun and an interesting way to explore genres.

James Croke: I’m glad that you had that reaction to the opening scene. I think it’s great to see a film cold. I think that’s actually the ideal way for any audience to see films. Some of the most fun experiences I’ve ever had in cinemas [was] going into a film completely cold and having no idea what I was in for. Then being blown away by it.

Sasha Luss Exudes Intelligence

MW: When we think of people who are stuck at home playing video games all day. We don’t think of beautiful women like Sasha Luss and Alexis Ren. Talk about casting these particular actresses. They’re very good and share the same space for the majority of the film in tight confines.

James Croke: Casting, especially Hana, being the main character, is on the screen for like 95-98% of the film. That was always going to be a big call. I wanted, above everything else, someone who just exuded the intelligence of that character but still had that playful side. Someone who you want the audience to want to hang out with for 94 minutes. No matter what’s going on. Sasha is one of those people, one of those actors. She exudes intelligence. When I talked to her for the first time, it was like us now over Zoom. I’d never met her before. The first conversation we had, I just knew straight away. This is the person that I needed to play this role. There was really no question in my mind for that role.

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A Shocking Ending

MW: I want to ask a question about the ending. It’s kind of shocking. Was there any thought that maybe this technology isn’t bad? That it’s going to make her better?

James Croke: Yeah, I mean, again, it’s not the technology that has done this. She’s done it to herself, really. I don’t have a tendency to write happy endings. I will always explore it. People, even in the development of the scripts, question that exact same thing. There were a few different endings that I’ve written, but none of them ended well. It was always pretty rough, the ending. I don’t want to give away any spoilers or anything.

James Croke: But the ending that was written, ended about four or five seconds earlier than what the current ending is. That last few seconds of it was all down to the editor. That’s not me. That was the editor, and it was brilliant. I was so happy when she did that. In editing, you get another shot at writing the script. She rewrote the end for me, even if it’s just like four or five seconds.

Latency will be released theatrically on June 14 from Lionsgate.