Josh Duhamel and Dylan Sprouse talk about their dark new thriller Neglected, the timeless revenge narrative, and the pressure of a race against time.
The new thriller Neglected explores a parent’s worst nightmare through a gritty, high-stakes lens. On the very day Detective Shaw (Josh Duhamel) begins his retirement, he is thrust back into action by AJ (Dylan Sprouse), a blood-soaked teenager who surrenders with a terrifying claim: he has buried Shaw’s son alive. Shaw must now revisit his own past to uncover why he was targeted for this twisted game of revenge.
Mama’s Geeky spoke with stars Josh Duhamel and Dylan Sprouse to discuss the intense atmosphere of the film. The duo opened up about the challenges of working with such dark themes, how they maintained their focus during a fast-paced production, and the emotional complexity of characters driven to extreme lengths by grief.
Josh Duhamel & Dylan Sprouse Talk Neglected
Mama’s Geeky: Neglected has some pretty dark, intense themes. How do you step away from that darkness once the cameras stop rolling?
Josh Duhamel: I haven’t done a lot of movies like this, but I always like to watch them. I’m a huge fan of, you know, David Fincher and Seven and movies like that. It was, it wasn’t difficult to get into character, just thinking about what a guy would be going through in this situation. We shot the movie at a really fast pace and I think that constant momentum, that constant inertia that we had throughout the production helped sort of stay in whatever mindset we had to be in.
Dylan Sprouse: I think part of it’s the gig, of course, but I will say that Josh made it really easy to kind of switch into character and come out of character as needed. I think that’s a kind of an underspoken skill of a lot of actors who are in a leading position, is that they need to actually set the tone of the vibe of the crew and the set. Josh was able to do that really well.
Mama’s Geeky: AJ’s methods are extreme, but his backstory is heartbreaking. How do you find a way to empathize with a character like that?
Dylan Sprouse: I think that the revenge narrative is kind of just timeless in general. You need to understand where they’re coming from and where they are now. Though I might not agree with his methods, I mean, I think it’s a natural thought to go there.
Josh Duhamel: You can imagine the amount of anger and turmoil some of these kids in these positions have been through that, you know, there’s no telling what they’ll do afterwards. How do you stay good when the world keeps making you do bad things? Having lost his brother, I think that all of that culmination of that pushes him to do things that are just so unbelievable.
For more on the making of Neglected, watch our full video interview.
About Neglected
On his first official day of retirement, Detective Shaw (Josh Duhamel) is called back to the precinct when a blood-drenched teenager named AJ (Dylan Sprouse) surrenders with a chilling ultimatum: he has buried Shaw’s teenage son alive. Plunged into a living nightmare, Shaw is forced to revisit a trail of grisly homicides as the oxygen in his son’s remote grave runs out.
In a pulse-pounding race against the clock, Shaw must navigate a precinct on the brink of mutiny and a suspect who thrives on psychological warfare, as his investigation unearths a devastating truth: Shaw wasn’t chosen at random.
Neglected comes exclusively to theaters on May 8th.
