By Travis Johnson
We were expecting an alien armada. We wound up at a footy match.
Actually, scratch that – we weren’t expecting an alien armada, but we suspected one. When FilmInk hiked out to the small Queensland town of Murwillumbah to check out the production of Occupation, Luke Sparke’s second genre effort following 2016’s Red Billabong, the exact nature of the existential threat was kept under tight wraps. The term “ground invasion” was bandied about a fair bit. Actors were cagey about revealing plot details, and the visiting press were carefully shepherded away from a single large tent containing… well, something.
Instead, we’re at the town showgrounds, where a country crowd is watching two amateur teams kick the ball around while the local radio personality, played by Felix Williamson, keeps up a running commentary. There’s a little arts and crafts fair, and a stall selling burgers and hot dogs. It’s a cliche to say it, but if it weren’t for the cameras and lights, you’d never know you were on a movie set.
It’s the calm before the storm, of course. This is The Last Footie Match on Earth. Very shortly Occupation‘s impressive cast, which includes Dan Ewing, Temuera Morrison, Stephanie Jacobsen, Jacqueline McKenzie, Rhiannon Fish, Charles Terrier, and more, will find themselves among the last survivors of a devastating alien invasion, and forced to band together to mount a ragtag resistance against the aliens.
Ewing, who featured in Red Billabong as well, likens the film to John Milius’ 1984 Russian invasion actioner, Red Dawn. “It’s from the point of view of a small town fighting off foreign invaders. Where those foreign invaders are from, we don’t know,” he says. “And it’s an Aussie small town, which I don’t think has been done.”
Ewing plays Matt, a former AFL star grappling with addiction and trying to get his life together so he can marry his fiancee Amelia, played by Jacobsen, who previously dealt with this sort of thing during her turn in Battlestar Galactica: Razor. Once things start blowing up, though, he is forced to test his mettle by raising arms against the invaders in true Aussie action hero style.
“It’s a redemption thing,” Ewing says. “I think when all the things start to go boom, it’s the human element that starts to take over. I think when we find Matt you see these glimpses of the man he once was, the former star, the former leader, and hopefully throughout the film, he can find who he was and become this leader that the other characters in the film desperately need him to be.”
Amelia has a similar arc, according to Jacobsen. When we first meet her character she’s a waitress studying for a law degree, and helping Matt turn his life around. “She’s a sweet, smart, small town girl, probably with babies and family on her brain and that kind of stuff. And then by the end of the film, she more or less becomes a war leader, which is one of the things that drew me to this project.”
Jacobsen is no stranger to the sci-fi genre, having featured in Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, with smaller parts in Farscape, Life on Mars, and more. What stood out for her about Occupation was her character’s journey. “I’ve done a lot of sci-fi in the US and I’ve played a lot of characters who have sort of come in as ready made soldiers, but I’ve never really been able to take someone on the entire journey from innocent to leader of the whole thing. So this has been amazing.”
Another genre veteran on hand is New Zealand acting legend Temuera Morrison, who donned helmet and rocket pack to play bounty hunter Jango Fett in the Star Wars prequels, and recently cropped up in Australian SF thriller The Osiris Child: Science Fiction Volume One. Here he’s playing a former prisoner on holiday with his family when the invasion begins. “I’ve got my family and we’re driving north heading to Port Douglas, I stopped for a pie, and all hell breaks loose!” A stranger to the town, his number one priority is protecting his family when the chaos erupts.
One thing everyone is clear on is that we shouldn’t be fooled by the relatively mundane small town footie action going on around us. This thing, we are repeatedly assured, is huge in scope. Gunfights. Explosions. Mass battles. Special effects. “The scale is massive, it’s actually a lot bigger than I thought it was going to be,” Ewing tells us. Meanwhile, Williamson reminisces about a practical pyro explosion he compares to something out of Apocalypse Now, and relates another scene where “…we’re being shot at by aircraft.”
He pauses reflectively. “It’s pretty big. it’s pretty amazing.”
All praise is directed at filmmaker Luke Sparke, who seems determined to leave it all out on the field with Occupation. The box office fortunes of Australian genre films are always chancy, but if Occupation falters, it won’t be for lack of trying.
“I’m so proud of him as a mate,” Ewing tells us. Jacobsen lauds the director’s ambition, and also his confidence.”He’s actually one of the most even keeled directors I’ve ever worked with.
“The really interesting thing about Luke is that he is able to be so intensely passionate and so genuinely open to suggestion. And that’s really rare. He’s fantastic. He really, really is, and I’m really interested to see where his career goes. I think he’s something really special.”
After a full day of shooting, the sun has dipped below the horizon and the temperature has plummeted. The assembled press are bundled into a slightly warmer car to await our driver. Notes are compared and interview recordings checked. Distantly, we hear the sound of marching feet.
Someone points. From the forbidden tent, a squadron of black-armoured alien foot soldiers has emerged – about a dozen or so. Details are hard to make out at this range. Red lights gleam. High tech rifles are ported. Somewhere out in the darkness, Dan Ewing’s freedom fighters are waiting.
The Occupation has begun.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FsC15OBrBk0
Occupation is screening at the 2019 Vision Splendid Film Festival, June 28 – July 6, 2019
