Wonder Watchlist

Lockjaw is the newest release from Magenta Edge Films, the independent film section of Bob Yari’s Magenta Light Studios. It’s also the debut film from screenwriter and director Sabrina Greco. A comedy film centered around Rayna (Blu Hunt), a young woman who is struggling with her relationship with alcohol. Hilarity and chaos ensue when Rayna has to live without her addiction, and now with her mouth wired shut. Greco and Hunt make a great pair, and they give Rayna a balance between being over-the-top and being relatable.

I was lucky enough to sit down with both Greco and Hunt over Zoom and chat about their new film Lockjaw. Our conversation lasted 15 minutes, during which we discussed the roller coaster that is festival season. The prosthetic that was used so convincingly for Rayna’s new smile. Lastly, and most importantly, what the experience of creating Rayna was like, and what it meant for Hunt to play her in Lockjaw.

Megan Loucks: “Thank you guys so much for sitting down with me today for Lockjaw and especially you, Sabrina. This is your debut film. One of my favorite things is to cover debut films, especially from female filmmakers.  So this first one’s for both of you.  This film had a great festival run, first being shown at Slamdance winning awards and grants along the way. What was that experience like for both of you and did it give you a new perspective on the film as the festivals went on?”  

Sabrina Greco: “Definitely, yeah. I think, I mean, playing Slamdance was great. Obviously this is my first movie. So having an outcome like that was really special to me. But also like, you know, I was very grateful it got in, but I was also like, well, the movie hasn’t played yet. So I know the programmers like it, but I don’t know if anyone else will. So let’s see what happens. But luckily a lot of people came out to see it and it had a really good response which was great because you know when you work on a movie for so long you have all these ups and downs with it. It’s a challenge, it’s something you often enjoy and sometimes you start to not and then you enjoy it again. So when people start watching it you get to have a whole other outlook on it because there might be things that you didn’t expect to be read as a joke but people laugh at and then you’re like oh yeah totally like yeah that was definitely intentionally a joke. 

But yeah, you get to see your own movie through other people’s eyes, which I think is really cool and is what the whole thing is about because you make a movie to be shown to an audience and hope that they get something out of it. And it was really special to see that that was a successful outcome. Like people were actually liking the movie and I got to talk to people after and they were saying that, you know, they resonated with Rayna or it made them want to make a movie and all and stuff like that. Yeah, going through the festival process and like, luckily we were able to kind of maintain going through festivals throughout all of last year, which was awesome. I got to go to a lot of places that I’d never been thanks to the festivals. But yeah, it was just such a positive, awesome experience. 

Blu Hunt: “Yeah, I mean, it was it was genuinely really exciting. And I mean, I don’t watch a lot of things that I do or, you know. I remember seeing this at Slamdance for the first time feeling being, that was the first time I think I’d seen the full movie too actually. I hadn’t seen it until that first screening at Slamdance. I felt emotional and stuff, because I love this character so much. I love this movie. I love everyone who worked on it and who’s in it. And getting to sit there with an audience.

I traveled to a few different of the festivals, the ones that I could make it to, and just seeing a full theater, full of people watching this. And I mean, I’m an actress, it’s always really fun to see your face all big up on a screen. But honestly, a lot of times I don’t, I really don’t watch what I work on, but this, I’m so proud of it. So it’s exciting that people like it so much because now I get to really, I get to watch it, you know? And, you know, it’s so exciting to see for Sabrina too. We had known each other for a while before we made this and it was, it’s just so exciting, you know?”

ML: “Sabrina, you crafted a character who went from being completely able-bodied to one that now has to live with a new disability. But not once did she lose her desirability. She was still sought after. She was still being flirted with, being, you know, courted, or even just having people still want to be her friend. How did you go about creating such a uniquely complicated and complex character like Rayna?”

SG: “Yeah, I wanted to make sure, I think, you know, if you had read the script [for Lockjaw], you would maybe on the page feel more, you would maybe sense some of Rayna’s unlikability more on the page. But I wanted to make sure that when I gave the character to Blu and we’re going to do this together, that Rayna was always going to remain charming. And part of that charm is like going to help carry us through the movie, despite anything bad that she does.

I really was interested in having these looser ideas help carry the movie. We like Rayna because of her charm. She doesn’t have a save the cat style moment, but we can feel this magnetism from her that makes us like her. And same with the idea that her goal is to have fun. Obviously I think her inner feelings go beyond that, but I thought it was also really interesting to have this like looser idea of the thing that she’s chasing be driving the whole movie.  

But her being sought after in all these situations I thought was interesting because it’s remnants of what happened before she got into the accident. But she’s also dealing with these new dynamics that happened after and people potentially trying to take advantage of her, people she maybe didn’t know before being really mean to her. I think that, and I think it’s exaggerated a lot in the movie, but those things are actually also kind of real. Like if you are in a situation like this where you have some temporary limitation or disability, like people do act kind of strange to you. Like that’s not a fake thing.

So I thought really emphasizing that in this was going to feel really interesting and help kind of build this world around Rayna where she’s acting out and she’s doing stuff that’s not great. But you also see the flip side of it where people are being really mean to her. Like she needed to be really balanced in order to make this character work. So I tried to keep that in mind like a lot when writing, also when working with Blu and making sure that like, she was always kind of, we were always kind of with her despite everything.”

ML: “Blu, you bring this character to life in Lockjaw and she is so unpredictable. I’m going to keep using the word complex because she is even some of the decisions she makes kind of have you questioning her. But what about Rayna from the paper stuck out to you that made you want to portray this character?”

BH: “I mean, I think I really related to her a lot as soon as I read the script. I can get stuck in loops. I’ve been really self-destructive. I’ve had my own relationship to alcohol, to men, you all these different things. Pushing people away, pulling them in, feeling like a person who is maybe overly charming in a way that becomes like, you’re not even sometimes realizing that you’re coming off in a way that you have no idea that you are. And I think that’s been a problem with me in my life where I’m like, well, and then someone like one of my friends has to do that thing, know, where they’re like, look, you’re an asshole, you know?

And then I’m just like Rayna where I’m like, what is wrong? Why would you say that to me? We’re not friends anymore. And then having to in three months later be like, hey, so you were right. I’m really sorry. You know,  there’s just all these things where I really felt, especially in the moment in my life that I was when I read the script, a few years ago, was it a few years ago? I don’t know. I felt like I had just gotten out of that kind of place in my life, probably the year before. 

It felt really like Sabrina really caught something here. And I’m not even sure if it was your intention necessarily, Sabrina, to capture these kinds of moments, especially alcohol and things like that. But it’s such a great depiction of struggling with alcohol in your 20s. Because sometimes it’s hard, you’ll be dealing with a problem and a lot of the media you have to go to as a woman is so over-raw and dark. So it’s nice to watch something where, like, I wish that there was another movie like this one I could have watched maybe when I was like 24 or something and been like, wow, okay, it’s not that serious. Like I can laugh at myself. And I think that’s like the first step to like getting out of a bad place. But anyways, yeah, when I read the script, I knew confidently I could play this character. It felt like it was really written for me.”

ML: “I have to ask about the prosthetic in Lockjaw. This is a question for both of you, but the prosthetic that was created by Gary Archer looked phenomenal. And even when I was watching the movie, I was like, did she actually wire her jaw shut? But what were some of the unique challenges when acting or filming with such an intricate piece of hardware? And I have to ask, did anyone keep it at the end of filming?”

SG: “Yeah. Blu actually has it right now. The main challenge was just like, you know, I’ve written the script and we did not get the mouthpiece made until a month before we shot. So I spent a lot of time developing the world of the movie in the script, but I like I did not know really what it was going to sound like and how everyone was going to feel acting with it and around it or, you know, what effect it was truly going to have on the movie until Blu put it on for the first time.

And that was like a really eye opening moment. That’s like, okay, things sound different than I expected or there’s certain lines I wrote that are just completely unintelligible when she has this in her mouth. We sat down, we read through the script, we crossed out a bunch of lines and also tried to figure out a physical way to get this across that’s not being said or what are the words that when you say them, I can’t understand them. We had to really go into the script with the mouthpiece and figure out what things to take out, what things to put in. Like a blessing from the movie and figuring that out was that like we had the translation. 

When Colin, who plays Mitch, would translate for her or other characters started doing it, that was something that was a later addition to the script, but it made so much sense in retrospect to that. You know, anytime that she needs to be heard, someone else has to say it for her, which is really frustrating for her, obviously. But anytime that she’s saying something and doesn’t get translated, it’s like, well, I guess it’s ultimately what she’s saying is not that important, which is also funny for the character that ,wow, she’s saying so much. But I guess the movie is telling me that it’s not as important. And I think it’s cool that you get to learn and understand her a little bit better as the movie goes on. That was something I always found really interesting about this whole prospect.”

BH: “Yeah, I remember going through the script and stuff and we almost took out a lot of the lines. We both agreed we have this great thing going on. I feel like the more we utilize that better, you know?  And deciding to have just people kind of translate for her, I think is funny. And I think it really works.

It’s true though, in a movie you don’t always have to understand what someone’s saying actually, you should technically, you should be able to put a movie on mute and follow it. That was actually something that an acting teacher told me once, they were like, if you ever wanna like learn a lot about acting, just put movies on and watch them on mute and just see if it’s a good actor, then you will be able to understand everything that’s happening without actually needing to know their lines.

Sometimes people watch it and they’re like, I can’t understand what she’s saying. That’s the point, there’s a lot of lines that you don’t need to know actually what she’s saying.  Sometimes I would on purpose make them harder to understand. And we would figure out when those moments were, so I feel like sometimes we would do different takes where, I’m really understood. And sometimes I’m not even really saying anything actually. Sometimes I would on purpose, no one is supposed to understand what I’m saying because actually I wasn’t saying anything. I think there’s probably a couple moments in the movie where you don’t understand her but I’m not really saying anything. Acting with it too was like I mean it’s just a great challenge and a great acting exercise and I wish I could do it again really and I still have the mouthpiece locked away somewhere, kind of gross, you know?  

I love that moment when Annabelle is like, here, look, I’m just like you and puts her retainer back in. And my character’s goes, what is wrong with you? Like, why would you do that? Because it’s actually so gross. I got braces like my senior year of high school. Like I wasn’t gonna need braces and then I had to get them last minute for an issue and showing up senior year, like the first time you open your mouth and you want to keep your mouth shut like the whole day and you’re like hi everyone you know and you know so it’s like it really is that kind of feeling too.”

ML: “Well, thank you guys so much for sitting down with me today. Hopefully, someday we can do it again. I have lots of questions.”

SG: “Thank you.”

BH: “Thank you.”

Watch Lockjaw in select theaters now, and on digital platforms starting September 8, 2026.

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