Bringing to mind the classic action films of the 80s and 90s, Osiris is a taut sci-fi actioner about a team of Special Forces commandos who wake up on an alien spacecraft with no memory of how they arrived. They soon horrifically discover they are being hunted by a merciless Alien race.
Bringing action legend Linda Hamilton back to the forefront of the genre she helped reinvent, Osiris, as described by star Max Martini, is “an action-packed, testosterone-driven film.” And alongside co-stars LaMonica Garrett and Michael Irby, the actors spoke with Peter Gray about their affection for the action genre itself, the pinch-me moments they all had when realising they were working with Hamilton herself, and how the authenticity of their performances were enhanced by practical effects.
Your characters here are these hardened soldiers who are dropped into an environment where it feels like their training isn’t enough. How did you approach playing soldiers that are at the top of their game, but ultimately outmatched by something beyond human?
LaMonica Garrett: I think most of us, we all generally (play) a lot of soldiers. A lot of special forces guys. But these (characters) are all in different environments. One soldier isn’t a blanket for all soldiers. Max and I are on a show right now, Lioness, where it’s present day military. I played a soldier in the 1800s in 1883, and that was a western. It was something different. This is a soldier, but you’re with aliens now. And that’s the fun part. It’s appealing. There’s no way to prepare to go up a against six foot seven creature from another planet. But that’s part of the fun. And the tactical part of it, we all stay together. There’s discipline in it. You take that from project to project. But the newness and the energy of these aliens, and these were physical aliens that were there. It wasn’t a CGI tennis ball or a green screen. It was a different experience. And I embraced it. And that’s exactly what I signed up to do.
Max Martini: Yeah, I think you got to come into the story…I mean, these characters have to be at a disadvantage, right? That creates the drama. But what I love about this film, and I keep mentioning it, is that I think, tactically, it’s so good. We all have sort of prior experience in boot camps for films. Fortunately, working in Hollywood, they put you with guys that former tier one operators and seal unit guys. We’re getting the best of the best training us. And then we had a former SEAL Team Six Operator on this movie that remained throughout the filming. So he was there to guide us, tactically, and make sure that we didn’t look like bozos (laughs).
Michael Irby: Yeah, for me personally, the opening part of the film, when you see us fighting faceless humans (and) everybody’s messed up, and we’re in that fight, I think we’re all prepared for that. We’re familiar with that. It’s something that we’ve all seen before. On the actor side of it, when you’re looking down the barrel and you see an alien on the other side, I really was conscious of trying to let you see the alien through my eyes. And being a human in these very extraordinary circumstances, because as far as fighting the humans and doing the tactical stuff and taking over the city, that’s very familiar to all of us. Through our training and through our tactical (experience). Everything we’ve been through in our whole career. But the aliens were a game changer, and that’s what took it from like a 10 to a 20, you know? That’s what made it fun for me. It’s just looking down the barrel and seeing these monsters coming at us.
Max Martini: I’ll add to that. This is what we keep brining attention to. It’s important that people understand what kind of movie this is. There’s a bit of an homage to old school sci-fi films (and) pre-visual effects, right? I did a movie called Pacific Rim, which was a sci-fi film that was 95% green screen. So it was all acting to laser pointers on green walls, right? And not knowing what it was going to look like (or) what the monsters looked like. (Osiris) actually had something in front of us. And for an audience that’s only familiar with computer generated monsters, this is going to be a really unique experience. And for those of us that actually remember those days, we’ve upped the game so that it’s like what we used to have, but it’s been improved upon. It’s kept the aliens practical, meaning actors in suits, and I think that’s what makes this movie really stand out on its own.
That was really one of the things that stood out when watching it. It was nice to see a film embrace the practical side of effects, which feels like isn’t happening as much now. You have these men of such stature, as you said they’re about six foot seven, that’s terrifying in itself. And obviously something like that helps with the authenticity of your performances in putting across that fear.
LaMonica Garrett: I remember the first time I saw Todd Masters, who’s behind all this, and he’s a legend in this whole genre, but the first time I saw the teeth moving and the eyes scrunching up, it was just in your face! It’s like, “How do they do that?” I was amazed by it. But that’s how it used to be done on big budget films back in the day. The fact that we were able to get this on a smaller budget, it was amazing. It looked gnarly in person.
Was there anything here that tested you as actors? Not just within the action genre.
Max Martini: This sci-fi for me, is new. Period. I had done Pacific Rim, and I was a sci-fi virgin at that point, but this is still a new experience. And it’s challenging. As an actor, you look at anything that is stepping into the unfamiliar. As an artist, you want to get into it. You want to try it. So, I think for me, it was fascinating, the process of making this film. Maybe even more so than even acting in it. Watching these creature artists and the controls manipulating the facial expressions, watching these actors create the physicality and the behaviour they were giving these aliens. It was just fascinating for me. That was a really big turn on, for lack of a better phrase (laughs).
Michael Irby: Yeah, like the technical stuff in the opening scene, like the cryochamber and we’re all getting dropped out of that. That was just a fun day, because you got a lot of grown men being covered in goop, and it’s absolutely everywhere, and the amount of laughter, and then the reset of them coming in to dry us off and goop us up again. Shooting inside of those tunnels, they’d reconfigure things, and you’d have to remember where you were. It made this world. We’re shooting on a sound stage, but they made the ship seem like it was four miles long and five miles high, right? Every corridor you went down, every different space we encountered…I think the imagination is what really has to allow these people to exist in these very unreal circumstances. And how do we ground that? The audience has to believe and we have to take them for the ride, which I think everybody – from hair and makeup and wardrobe – achieved. We all had the same objective.
There’s something primal about a survival story in an alien world. It really strips these characters down to who they really are. Did you discover anything about your characters while playing them in these extreme circumstances?
LaMonica Garrett: I think, for me, these guys are tier one operators. They’ve seen it all. They’ve done it all. There’s no surprises, and they’re all badasses to be in this situation where it’s so unknown. You’re seeing the revelation of what’s going on around them. We present these moments where they’re experiencing things they’ve never experienced before. And there’s a fear there. These soldiers have fear. They’re not just mindless. And I think you’re able to see that in (Osiris) because it’s so unfamiliar and unknown. It’s not just the creatures, but the environment. How did they get in the goop? Why are there mags filled up to the top? There’s so much unknown going on, and that’s fine to experience through the character. You don’t know what you’re going to feel when you’re reading the script. But when you get (on set) and you see the environment…that’s the experience for us to go through.
There’s that “band of brothers” mentality here. How did the three of you build that camaraderie to make us believe that these are men who have bled and survived together long before the aliens show up?
Michael Irby: I’m going to say Bourbon Street (laughs).
LaMonica Garrett: (Laughs) A lot of Bourbon Street in New Orleans.
Max Martini: We bled and survived last call together (laughs).
LaMonica Garrett: The bonding on this movie was like no other. We had some fun. Most of us were in the same hotel, so when we got off work, usually people break out in a million different directions and you see them the next day on set. Not us. We get off work and we got a game plan. We’ve all been doing this for such a long time, we know how to show up and be professional and be ready to go the next day, but we had some fun. It was New Orleans. It was Bourbon Street…
Michael Irby: A lot of team meetings. Yeah, we’ll label them as “team meetings.”
Max Martini: We also knew each other. Michael and I did a show for four years together (The Unit). LaMonica and I are on a show together right now (Lioness), and we had just come off of that and went into this movie, wait, actually that’s not true. We did this movie and then I went into Lioness…
LaMonica Garrett: This was the first and then we jumped onto Lioness, but we just all hit it off. It was a lot of good personalities coming together. And it’s my first time (with) the director, (William Kaufman). Will and Max have worked together before (The Channel). It was just a good group. And that doesn’t happen often. The stars and the moon and the clouds were all in line for this to happen. And I’m thankful for it.
And obviously here we have Linda Hamilton, who isn’t in films as much as she should be. She’s definitely an icon of the action genre. Was there that moment of, “Oh, shit, she survived the Terminator?!” Is there something of a shift when she’s on set with you?
Max Martini: I did have that moment of, like, she’s the original female badass, you know? She reinvented female characters, kind of, right? I had some pinch me moments. Did you guys?
LaMonica Garrett: Yeah, when she was on set, and I hadn’t seen her for hours, but it’s like, “Linda’s here.” It’s like you stop what you’re doing. If she was over there eating, all of a sudden, it’s like, “Yeah, I think I’m hungry.” (Laughs). It was one of those pinch me (moments). Some of these jobs are just work, and it is what it is, but some of these moments and some of these productions, it’s like, I’m a kid right now watching this whole thing play out in front of me, and she was a big part of my childhood.
Michael Irby: When I found out that Linda was involved, I think we were at lunch and one of the producers came down and said, “You guys can’t say a word.” And her name popped up. Look, I was very proud and excited to be in a movie with Max Martini (laughs), but when I found out Linda Hamilton was in? Oh, I’m in a good one now.
The film asks that question of, “What happens when our best weapons fail?” Did the film raise any bigger questions for about humanity’s place in the universe? Or do you think of it all as just pure survival mode? Did you ever have those conversations?
LaMonica Garrett: I can’t say. For me, personally, we’re all just specks in this universe. The Earth is just a grain of sand on the beach when looking at how big the universe is. We are grossly outnumbers and out-maneuvered.
Michael Irby: I’m gonna say, for me, it was just pure survival. Not only for me, but my brothers, because that’s our skill set. (This film) is just a big cat-and-mouse game. Sometimes we’re the cat. Sometimes we’re the mouse. But at the end of the day, I was just trying to breathe one more breath, you know? That’s how I look at life. I’m kind of like LaMonica, as far as this is all happening way beyond my control. That’s the only thing I’m really conscious of, is what I can control. And that is me, my weapon, my tactics, and getting to the objective. I didn’t really think about where I’m going to fit into the hierarchy of things.
Max Martini: It’s funny, I think, every now and again, something will pop up on Instagram, like a UFO sighting, or the government will say they’re releasing the UFO Files. I agree with LaMonica. The universe is too big for us to be the only life out there, so, you know, I’m a believer. But here’s what I’ll tell you, when they come for me, I’ve already cleared one of their ships!
It’s been mentioned how Osiris taps into the films that we all grew up with. For all of you, was there a gateway film, regardless of genre, that was your way into loving film? Or a comfort movie?
Michael Irby: There were so many movies I saw before I was an actor, when I was just a kid and I just liked movies, and it was called Uncommon Valor, with Gene Hackman, and his son is a POW, and he puts together this rag-tag crew of guys to go back and try and find his son in Vietnam. It was just one of those movies that…you know, I grew up playing a lot of sports, and I have two brothers, and I didn’t know that I was going to be thrown into a lot of military action films, but there was something about that movie. It was the first movie I’d ever cried in (too). I was probably nine-years-old, but I think at that moment I knew that it was not just about me, but about my brothers as well.
Max Martini: For me, I remember watching movies as a kid that were impactful for me that drive me into a space. And not knowing that I wanted to be an actor, but they were movies that made me want to be an observer into this world. Ironically, they’re all Spielberg movies. Like, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, E.T., even Schindler’s List.
Michael Irby: I mean, Jaws…I couldn’t take a bath for two months (laughs). I was afraid of the bathroom. It was incredible. And talk about practical! I think they would have ruined that movie now with CGI, and the fact that they had an actual (shark) and the animatronics and everything.
LaMonica Garrett: For me, for me and my buddies growing up, everything was an adventure. Everything was getting on our bikes and you’d just go all day, and then when the street lights come on, you know you gotta get back home. And a lot of that was what we watched back then. Whether it was The Goonies, Stand By Me, or Beast Master…I think adventure movies got me into that sci-fi world. But I also read a lot of comic books (too). And the older I get, I want to tell those stories. I want to be a part of them. There’s too many movies to name as one or two that influence me, but when certain scripts come around, it’s like the little me would love this film. My wife tells me all the time how I don’t watch grounded dramas on television. I want to escape my reality and go somewhere, so I don’t watch Grey’s Anatomy, or This Is Us, or things like that. They’re good shows, but I like adventure and sci-fi. So that’s what draws me to what I’m doing now.
Max Martini: And just to add to that, Peter, we’ve been saying that this is really an entertaining film, you know? It’s really just pure entertainment. It’s not preachy. There’s nothing gut-wrenching. It’s crack-a-beer, make some popcorn, and enjoy the ride. I think for that alone, people are going to enjoy it, because we don’t really get these movies anymore. It’s a really fun, action-packed, testosterone-driven film.
Osiris is now screening in select theatres and available on Digital in the United States.
