Lionsgate’s Adverse is a thriller, action, crime film that hits close to home to the writer and director, Brian Metcalf. What do you do in a situation where a loved one’s life is spiraling out of control, but they don’t want to do anything to help themselves? Despite many pleas and sacrifices, that person just doesn’t have the willpower to change. Eventually, that kind of lifestyle could get that person into certain trouble that will back them into a corner and put them in danger. What do you do then? This is what Thomas Nicholas’ Ethan goes through with his sister Mia in Adverse.

Here is the synopsis for Adverse:

Thomas Nicholas (“Red Band Society”) and Mickey Rourke (The Wrestler) star in this gritty, intense urban thriller about one man’s quest for revenge. Struggling to make ends meet, rideshare driver Ethan (Nicholas) learns his sister Mia is deep in debt to a sleazy drug dealer. When Mia goes missing, Ethan discovers that crime bossKaden (Rourke) is behind the act, and to get close to him Ethan takes a job as Kaden’s driver. One by one Ethan hunts down members of Kaden’s crew to wreak bloody vengeance as he prepares to confront Kadenhimself. The stellar cast also includes Lou Diamond Phillips, Sean Astin, and Penelope Ann Miller.

With the release of the film, LRM Online had the opportunity to talk with writer and director, Brian Metcalf about Adverse. During our conversation, we talk about his personal story that inspired the film. As well as Thomas Nicholas’ role that takes him away from his well-known role in the American Pie films. You can check out the interview down below!

Emmanuel Gomez: I had the chance to watch Adverse last night. A lot of really deep themes. And I noticed in your director’s statement about where the inspiration for the film came from, would you mind talking about it?

Brian Metcalf: Absolutely. So I had actually had an ex-girlfriend who ended up hanging out with the wrong crowd. We were actually dating before she started hanging out with the wrong group of people. Then her friend got her involved with this other group and they were heavy into drugs and all kinds of bad stuff. They were stealing stuff and everything like that. So it was a bad situation. Then obviously for her being around them, she herself started becoming hooked on drugs, everything there, and it just became a mess. Eventually, we had to part ways, but that’s where the basis of this came from, was seeing her get involved with this crowd. Then, you have to do what you can to try to help them out of the situation, but if they don’t want to be helped, there’s only so much you can do.

Emmanuel Gomez: So that’s something that we see Thomas Nicholas as Ethan dealing with as far as trying to help his sister out in Adverse?

Brian Metcalf: That’s correct.

Emmanuel Gomez: So my question to you, because obviously, you have a first-person view of this as well, is what toll does that take on a person to consistently be trying to fight for somebody who won’t do it for themselves?

Brian Metcalf: In all honesty, it is living hell. It is absolutely a living hell because you’re always worried about that person. You’re stressed out all the time. It’s hard for you to concentrate on certain things. At the time I was going to college. So it was definitely a hard time to concentrate on certain things. It was just a really tough experience for me. Eventually at some point, because she didn’t want to be helped and there’s only so much you could do. She wasn’t a minority or underage at the time, you have to eventually just let go. You know what I mean? 

You have to let her make her own decisions and what she wants to do, so it’s a tough thing. I changed obviously the script around to make it that Kelly Arjen’s character, Mia was the younger sister and is a minority. So, that is a way that Ethan is able to constantly make sure that she can’t make her own decisions completely. Whereas my situation, the girl that I was dating, she was over 18. So there’s obviously nothing you can do about it. 

Emmanuel Gomez: In Adverse, you don’t just deal with the decisions that people are making in the present time. But you’re also dealing with decisions that people made in the past. How those come back and haunt you, possibly for the rest of your life. You talked about the way you develop consequences for people’s decisions. 

Brian Metcalf: Yes, ultimately the main theme of it is about choices and decisions that people make and what becomes of the decisions they make. Some people make good decisions and some people make bad decisions and some people are regretful and some people are not. I thought it was always an interesting theme to base and show everyone from Kaden’s character, realizing that he, Mickey Rourke didn’t know for sure or realize that he didn’t necessarily want to sit down on the path that he sat down on him being this violent gangster. But now that he’s looking back on his life and everything like that, he has to make choices or he has to look back and see what choices he made and his regrets to making those choices.

 Emmanuel Gomez: I wanted to ask about Mickey Rourke, Kaden’s character, because even without too much of a backstory, in the beginning, you can tell that his persona, as a drug kingpin, as a gangster, he’s phoning it in. Can you comment on Mickey Rourke’s acting for it because it came through very, very well. 

Brian Metcalf:  What was really good is Mickey Rourke and I had a really strong chemistry that worked out well together. We talked a lot about the character, and he could really feel it. He based the character off of his brother, who was actually dying of cancer, or he who died of cancer. So essentially he knew a lot of the nuances of what his brother would say and what the brother would do and everything like that. So what we were able to do with his character for this in particular, was basing it off of his brother and knowing how his brother slurred his speech and how he talked and had coughing problems and everything like that. It just gave it a whole new level of dimension, I thought, so.

Emmanuel Gomez: Yeah, that’s amazing and deep. I appreciated the fact that you added another character of Matt Ryan and Jake. To really show the contrast in somebody who really is about that life. Then also Kaden, who is just, like I said, not there for it anymore.

Brian Metcalf: What’s interesting is Jake could have been the younger version of Mickey Rourke’s character in a roundabout way. Not as violent, but obviously he did have that side when he was younger. He thought he was invincible. There were times where he thought what he was doing was right. He was getting a lot of money and power. That’s where Jake is at right now. Jake is doing what he does because he wants the money and power that Kaden has. But obviously, he has no conscience to him or at least for now. 

Maybe Mickey’s character didn’t have that conscience so strongly before. But now that he’s looking back at his life, he’s starting to really realize that he’s not the same type of person. A lot of people thought before watching this film, that Mickey would be just a really mean gangster with no dimension to him or whatever, whatnot. So it was really good to see that people saw and understood that there is a softer side to his character.

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Emmanuel Gomez: Yes, I agree. Can you talk a little bit about Thomas Nicholas’ portrayal as Ethan in Adverse. How did you guys, conversation-wise, have in how he was going to be portrayed?

Brian Metcalf: One thing we wanted to do was make Tom’s character something that we had not seen before. Meaning everyone knows Tom from the American Pie films and his earlier movies like Rookie of the Year and everything. This is not that character. This is absolutely as far away from it. So Tom really focused hard on this. He acted differently. Got his accent from a combination of different real people that he had known. He had actually gotten in really good shape for this role. He just looked completely different. He’s unrecognizable from what we know him from the American Pie films, I’ll put it that way.

It was really important to go over in detail his back history and do a lot of table reads and rehearsals together and his blog. There are things that I keep saying, this is too much Tom Nicholas from American Pie. Just get away from this and let’s move away from all this stuff. So he became a very hardened person for this particular role, if that makes sense, someone who had this life, because we went a lot into discussion about his childhood to where he’s at now. Having gotten in trouble and being on parole and all those different things. With that, we were able to really shape that character and bring it to life.

Emmanuel Gomez: What was the biggest challenge for you in putting this film together?

Brian Metcalf: Oh, well, there were many challenges every step of the way. From raising the finance, to production, to post-production, to distribution. I mean, there’s always challenges that we’re facing, so there were so many problems that arose. I’m just trying to think of what one, in particular, stood out the most. We obviously had a limited budget to work with. So trying to get all of the actors scheduled for the right times, and we shot it over 47 different locations.

Emmanuel Gomez: Wow

Brian Metcalf:  So we were running and gunning this like crazy. You may not realize it when you’re looking at it, really 47 locations. But yeah, we were all over LA and there were times where we would be set up. Where we would have to move to three different locations in the same day. So that was really crazy. Just moving from one to the next, to the next, and all that stuff. Having one team tear down while the next team already has it set up the next location. Especially for the days with Mickey Rourke. We really carded him around a lot to a bunch of locations to get what we could. So it was quite an experience.

Emmanuel Gomez: That sounds very, very stressful, but the important thing is, there you are, you got the film completed and it’s great. One final question. What do you hope audiences take away from adverse? 

Brain Metcalf: I just hope that people think about it and remember it and that they were at least somewhat entertained. Mainly that they realize they get the message of this, which is obviously, like I said, about the choices that people make and what consequences are happened after the choices that they make. So, some people will just watch it as a fun action flick or whatever, whatnot. Other people will be, whatever. But I just want people to hopefully get it, if that makes sense. Some people will and some people won’t. 

Emmanuel Gomez: Absolutely. Brian, thank you so much for spending some time with me this morning. I really appreciate it. 

Brian Metcalf: Thank you very much.

Lionsgate’s Adverse is out now On Demand, Digital, and DVD.