THE LAST KISS Interviews with Director / Co-Writer Yoko Okumura and Co-Star Arkira Chantaratananond

As a surprise Halloween season treat, Blumhouse has released The Last Kiss, "a fun and twisted coming-of-age mystery thriller that will keep audiences on their toes and guessing until the very end." Directed and co-written by Yoko Okumura, and starring Mckenna Grace, Jade Michael, and Arkira Chantaratananond, the film is now available on digital platforms, and I had a chance to catch up with Okumura and Chantaratananond to discuss the making of the movie:

I thought that the fairytale introduction was a really fun way to jump into this concept. Can you tell me where this idea came from and how it became your latest project?

Yoko Okumura: It was written by the lovely Krystal and Alon Zivs, and it was brought to me by Blumhouse to consider for directing. We've gone through so many different kinds of slasher concepts before, but the idea that kissing can give you visions was something that I had not seen in a slasher movie, especially a teen one. And then from that jumping off point, I was also really excited that there was a best friend story mixed into all of this, and a lot of opportunities to talk about kissing and what it means in our culture and then put that into a horror movie context.

Can you speak to the casting and finding the perfect people for these roles?

Yoko Okumura: McKenna [Grace] was so enthusiastic about this. She was just like, "Oh my God, I really understand this girl." I've been a fan of hers since I saw her in The Handmaid's Tale, so we just got super lucky with her as the lead, and she really brought her A-game to this project. She really is just such a professional and such a trooper.

Then you have this rest of this ensemble. For a slasher, you need the ensemble to really sing, and I had a really great time looking for all these young up and comers. Arkira [Chantaratananond], who plays the best friend character, Poppy, I really think from the very beginning I had written into the script that Poppy is effervescent, just light and fluffy, wonderful best friend character. And she really just, in the audition, brought exactly that. And then, with Jayden and Joseph and Riley, everybody, everybody... we got lucky with and they really brought their own... I really love it when the actor brings their own spin to a character; it surprises me and shows me something that I hadn't necessarily expected. Everybody did their version of that.

As you know, it's often in a mystery that only one central character knows something is going on and then it takes the entire story or film for others to catch up. That's not the case here with Laurel and Poppy, and I really liked that. Why was this best friend relationship so important to you?

Yoko Okumura: In an early iteration, it really was just Laurel, but then I was like, "You know what? Especially in a movie where we want a little bit more comedy and we want some banter, we really want to hear what's going on." I felt she needed a detective partner, somebody that she can really talk about her theories with and vocalize all her anxieties to. And so the natural person was her best friend who was right there, and so we remade Poppy into somebody who's a co-detective with her. Obviously, this is also a love story, but my best friendships have been my core foundational relationships and female friendships. So the relationship Laurel really has the most of an arc with is with Poppy.

Akira: [Poppy's] like, "This sounds really great." I thought that was such a fun direction where she's not skeptical at all. She doesn't think this couldn't be a real thing. And I think it's because Poppy is just so excited that there's something in Laurel's life that is activating her because I have a feeling that they're a lot more similar when they start the movie. They dress a lot more similarly. I'm sure they do the same things, and then obviously they grow up into different people. But I think that's really fun and really cute that Poppy's like, "You know what? I don't care if it sounds crazy. I am ready to roll with it."

Akira, what was it like filming with Mckenna on set?

Arkira Chantaratananond: She's so sweet. I was just thinking about this because I was talking to her yesterday. She's the cutest person. She's so, so smart also, so it's really lovely to work with her where she's literally that girl, who when they're asking for 20 years of experience and you're 20 years old, that's literally her, bro. Super professional, but also hilarious and just a really fun time to hang out with her.

And what about Yoko? What was your experience with her on set?

Arkira Chantaratananond: Yoko's amazing! My first thought when I worked with her on set was that it's so nice to work with a director whose sense of aestheticism is so concrete. She's just lime green and hot pink, and that's a very, very intentional choice all the time. And her sets are so maximalist and so intentional, and I love that. She does the same with all of her character's designs and all of her character choices. Everybody has a certain mood board that she designed for all of them. They act a certain way that she's already fleshed out. It's a dream.

Where did filming take place? Can you talk a little bit about the locations that you shot at?

Yoko Okumura: Yeah, we shot in Toronto, in the surrounding suburbs of Toronto, Hamilton, different places elsewhere around there. I'm from Minneapolis, Minnesota, so I did make it technically Minnesota, where the story is set. It's not a big part of the story, but if you look at the car license plates and stuff, it is Minnesota, so we're faking that in Toronto.

Arkira Chantaratananond: We shot through Halloween, and so everybody dressed up on Halloween, which was super fun. On Halloween itself, everybody had a scene except for me. So then when I came on, I dressed up as Drake, the Hotline Bling meme, just myself though. Nobody else was dressed up, but it was cool to see how everyone did it. Also, McKenna has a really amazing voice and she's really good at guitar, and so we would go into her trailer and just sing and play with her, and it was just really wholesome and cute.

And can you speak to some of the film's kills and special effects and putting that together on set?

Yoko Okumura: The biggest part of why I love making horror movies is special effects and all the arts and crafts you get to do with all the bloodwork and making prosthetics. There's a certain injury in this movie that we got to build a whole prosthetic leg, and I just loved watching all these artists find these creative ways to execute these special effects. They had to dig into the sand and put her actual leg into it and put her fake leg stuck onto her knee. I just love the problem solving and watching artists create stuff like that.

The concept of this movie is that she sees how people die when she kisses them, so a lot of these kills are really predictive. It was really important to me to build a very specific look for these death flashes. So we actually did a lot of different tests and a lot of different color schemes and camera tests to figure out what that look would be. But ultimately, because I'm so inspired by 1960s Disney movies for this and the fairytale homage for the aesthetic, we really went with a Maleficent, Sleeping Beauty neon green and purple look for these death flash scenes. And we were just very much inspired by classic slashers and the icon of the bloody knife.

Arkira Chantaratananond: The forest scenes—any vision scene—is that purple and bright green, and it's just a really fun palette that I feel like you don't super see in horror movies a lot. It's very old Disney, the way they were animated. It's green, it's purple, the forest is swirling with blues and things like that, but in real life now. So it's really cool.

Yoko, what's your favorite slasher movie?

Yoko Okumura: You can't go wrong with a classic like Friday the 13th. When it comes to a kill that was executed, Kevin Bacon's kill was always really influential for me because it was so subtle how they really pulled your eye just with that little bit of blood that falls onto his head. You're like, "Oh, the danger is above him." And it just so simply pulls your attention to something and misdirects you in such a brilliant way. Then obviously suddenly the killer and the danger is actually under him. That was really influential for me as far as building misdirects and kills.

Akira, did you watch a lot of horror movies to prepare for the role?

Arkira Chantaratananond: I'm a horror weenie, bro. I am the top employee at Weenie Hut Jr., but I love a psychological thriller. I'm not good at gore or anything like that, but I love suspense. I love just a... "What the fuck is going on?" type of a thing. So I am a big fan of that. I like a few of the older slashers—I'm okay with that. Psycho is cool, but you'll never catch me watching Saw. You know what I mean? It's too crazy, but I love movies like Shutter Island. That's a great one.