ComingSoon Editor-in-Chief Tyler Treese spoke to Amber Alert director Kerry Bellessa about the thriller movie. Bellessa discussed remaking his earlier found-footage movie of the same name, working with Hayden Panettiere, and more. It is out in select theaters and on demand on September 27.
“An ordinary rideshare becomes a high-stakes game of cat and mouse when Jaq (Hayden Panettiere) and Shane (Tyler James Williams) receive an alert of a child abduction on their phones. Quickly realizing they are behind a car that matches the description of the kidnapper’s, Jaq and Shane desperately race against time to save the child’s life,” says the synopsis for Amber Alert.
Tyler Treese: This is so unique that you got to revisit this idea you had a little over a decade ago. I watched some of the original Amber Alert, which is very much a found footage film. This is a far more traditional thriller. How was it revisiting this idea, fleshing it out, and getting a second crack at it?
Kerry Bellessa: It’s been awesome. When I first made the film, I wanted it to be a traditional film. I wanted to have millions and millions of dollars and have beautiful cinematography. Then I realized that we had no money. No one knew who I was, and my wife was like, “Hey, we have $5,000 in our bank account. Let’s go make it happen.” That’s basically what we did. Me and my buddy Josh [Oram] then wrote it, and we thought it would be a great concept. I scoured the internet, and I was like, “Why hasn’t anyone done this yet?” And so we set off to do that.
Then after that, we wrote a traditional script. Basically reimagined what we wanted to do with a real budget. Then having the opportunity to do this has been a dream come true. It’s been awesome. When you shoot a $5,000 film, you only have me, my dad helped me out, and our crew was like four people. So it was nice to work with so many other awesome creative people who could help realize this vision and work as a team. It was awesome.
Another part that’s cool about this taking 12 years from the original is that you get to embrace the technology. I’m not sure you could have really done the AirPods plotline, which I thought was so fun. How was it really implementing and updating this idea for the script?
Even 12 years ago, we didn’t have Uber drivers and stuff like that. What I like about this is that having two individuals who don’t know each other, who are put in an extraordinary position and what would you do? She has a point of view that I think a lot of people will relate to. He has a point of view that other people would relate to. It’s interesting hearing people be like, “I don’t know if I would do what she does,” and “I don’t know if I would do what he does.”
I just like things that could possibly really happen and see how would you handle something like this? That’s kind of the genesis of the film is I had an idea of what I would do, and my wife had a completely different idea of what she would do. Then we put it together, and you have something really fun and exciting
I like the ambiguity in the Amber Alert remake. In the original film, they see the license plate, so they know they’re following the guy at first. In this one, it’s a very common car, as Tyler’s character points out, and as a viewer, you’re like, “Is she overreacting?” There’s a philosophical clash.
I feel so fortunate to have Hayden and Tyler. They were such pros. They were so, so good. They had great instincts. Um, they had great ideas. It was really fun to collaborate with them and be like, “You know what, Kerry, I might do this.” To be able to expound on their ideas too, which I really like. It was just a treat to have working professionals who do this for the last 25 years who just take us on a ride. I sometimes found myself just being a fan and getting into it and being like, “Okay, cut, cut, cut. We gotta move on.” But I think the material really spoke to them, which I really liked.
Hayden is the lead in this film. She obviously brought a lot to the character. There’s some really good emotion later on as the film continues. So how was it kind of collaborating with her and bringing that to her character?
She couldn’t have been nicer. We felt very fortunate that she wanted to do this project with us. She’s well known, and she was so accommodating. She would ask like really insightful questions, “Kerry, why are we doing this?” I’d give my explanation, and then she would go, “Okay,” and maybe make it a little better. It was just nice working with an individual who has been on set her whole life. It’s crazy, too, how when you say action, if there’s chaos around, they’re just so locked in. That was just awesome. They just kill it, and when you cut, they just have fun. It was awesome to work with them.
It seemed like the original Amber Alert was much more free-form and improvised a lot of the dialogue. This is much more structured. What did you like about having a more core idea and having this film much more structured in a traditional manner, especially with the dialogue? We get some small story beats that really wind up coming up later. It was good planting those seeds there.
Well the great thing was is Josh and I had 10 years to write this script. There have been a hundred iterations and different people we are gonna make it with or it got optioned or this or that. I feel like having so much time we were able to really like perfect the script. The things that I like about the original was we did an outline, and I had my wife and my good friend, Chris, but it was hard because I was filming and I couldn’t talk. So I’m like tapping. We have this ongoing joke. My wife hates it when I tap her now because I did that for three weeks straight. Then I’m thinking, “Oh, the tap means you do this,” and she’s always like, “What is the tap supposed to do?” So it was just difficult in that sense.
It was nice to know everything that was happening. We had preparation time, they could read the script before and know what we were doing. We had our location. It’s just like the preparation was so fun and exciting that we all kind of knew what we were going to do. They were both different beasts because I still love the original so much, and for $5,000, I don’t know how you can do anything better. I was really happy, but with this, I’m very excited. I think people are really gonna enjoy this journey and then go to Denny’s after and be like, “He was a complete clown.” “No, she was. He wasn’t.” And then hopefully they’re kind of bickering after about who was right, who was wrong and just kind of have fun with it.
This may have come from the iterations on the script, but I like that we see the 9-1-1 operator. We also see the mom really going through it. How was it sprinkling in these different perspectives in Amber Alert?
That I love because we couldn’t do that before. We had to keep the camera running and make believe that we’re making an audition video. It was so nice and helpful in storytelling to go different places and to get other people involved and seeing point of views. Now we never wanted to see our “bad guy.” I always think of him as like he was Jaws in the water, and whenever we see him, we’re a little worried, but it was just nice working also with Kevin Dunn, our police officer, and Saidah [Arrika Ekulona], our 9-1-1 operator, were so awesome and were such pros and had great ideas and instincts also. It was just really nice, and I think it built more texture in the film. More attention using them as well to see that they’re stressed out about what’s going on, and with our mom as well, just so many different people and how they react to this situation.
