After the Dark is more of a philosophical post-apocalyptic thriller, out Friday in theaters and on VOD. On the last day of school in Jakarta, a teacher (James D’Arcy) poses a though experiment for his students. Given a shelter with space for 10, who would you choose to survive the apocalypse and continue humanity? The discussion is illustrated dramatically in scenes of the shelter in the aftermath of disaster. Among the class is Daryl Sabara, playing a student with some of his own suggestions for solving the problem. He also appears in The Green Inferno, coming out later this year, which we saw at the Toronto International Film Festival last year. Now some 14 years after breaking out in the first Spy Kids movie, we spoke with a grown-up Sabara by phone about his latest and upcoming movies.
CraveOnline: I first met you as a kid on Spy Kids. Was World’s Greatest Dad a real turning point for your career?
Daryl Sabara: Yeah, I would have to say that it was. I think also a turning point for me before that was I did this workshop of this musical called 13 that Jason Robert Brown did the music for, and I was actually 13. That was a really big turning point for me after doing all the Spy Kids films and kind of growing up on a set and just being a kid and having fun, I did that musical and it kind of woke me up to playing characters and why I love doing what I do. Then yeah, World’s Greatest Dad was such an honor to work with Bob[cat Goldthwait] and Robin [Williams]. I learned so much from them but also to play that character was a thrill.
Did that workshop of 13 become a production?
It did, yeah. We did our workshop at the Kirk Douglas for a few shows and then it went to Center Theater Group and then it went to Broadway for a little bit. I was just involved with that workshop. I played this character named Archie and he had muscular dystrophy and I was on crutches the entire show. So that was just a completely different character that I’d never done before.
Was After the Dark a complicated shoot to coordinate because you have everything laid out, but you go between the classroom scenes and the actual location scenes?
You would think, and seeing the movie it looks like it. For me, I kind of thought it was like a study abroad. It really was 20 of us, 20 kids going out on a field trip. We did a lot of the classroom scenes first for the first couple weeks in Jakarta, and then we went on expeditions where we went to Yogyakarta first and shot all the scenes near the temples. Then we went straight from there to Mount Bromo and did all the volcano stuff, and then we went straight from there to Sumatra and we did all the island work. Then we went back to Jakarta to finish up.
Was there one continuity person who’s job it was to make sure everyone matched between the classroom and the locations?
There was definitely a continuity person but we all were having so much fun, all 20 of us, that we wanted to make it easy for everyone and we were all pretty good about remembering where we were and things like that so we could shoot everything.
When you read the script, did it provoke a lot of philosophical thoughts?
For me, the message that I got after reading the script was these 20 kids are faced with this apocalypse and they have to figure out who lives, who dies and how to survive. The best way to survive is just enjoy life and enjoy each other. That’s what I got and that’s why I wanted to do it because that’s how I try to live my life.
Everyone has their own parts in the movie, but are you still in every scene and working even when it’s just background?
Oh, absolutely but working there, the locations we shot were so beautiful, there wasn’t really anyone who wanted to go back to their trailer, their tent, or anything like that. We were all really supportive of each other on camera and off. For me, I’m so excited whenever I get an opportunity to be on a set that I’m usually there for as much as I can be.
Would the cast discuss their own solutions to the thought experiment, besides what was scripted?
We had fun. [Writer/director] John Huddles gave us a couple riddles that I still haven’t figured out, like why the exit code was the numbers that they were and how those numbers are relevant. So we had our own little challenges on set that would keep us entertained and stuff like that. Also if we had some down time, we would just explore.
I didn’t even think that the numbers could mean something. I’m going to have to research that more.
Yeah, yeah, and if you figure it out let me know. John Huddles will still not tell me.
What were your favorite parts of Jakarta to explore?
Man, everything. There was an older man, when we were filming in Mount Bromo, for lunch there was a little cafe and there were a couple people who worked there but there was this man that would just walk around and start massaging us. The only word that he knew was tired. So he would come up and rub our shoulders and he was so sweet and friendly, and he would just go, “Oh, tired.” And we’d be like, “Yeah, exactly.”
Just to see how they live was incredible. Every location visually was gorgeous. When we were in Sumatra, we swam from the island to this board that we had docked out in the middle of the sea. We snorkeled during our down time. I saw a couple snapping turtles. That was pretty exciting. It made me swim a little faster.
Jakarta seems like a new or unusual place to shoot films. Do they have a whole apparatus for production?
They do, yeah. We were on sound stages. Traffic there is not the best. It could take up to an hour to go five miles, but I have to say, and there in Jakarta you see people on motorcycles like five people to one motorcycles, but no one really gets in accidents. So there might be a lot of traffic but everyone’s safe. We never saw any accidents. Jakarata’s sound stages were really cool.
