Henry Thomas is well known for his role as Elliot in , as well as his recent horror projects with filmmaker Mike Flanagan. But now the actor stars in Crawlspace, a new thriller from Paramount, where he jokes it could help him “launch an over 50” action film career. Thomas recently sat down with PopCulture.com to talk about Crawlspace, which follows a small-town plumber who winds up on the bad side of some murderous thieves looking for a bag of money that he’s trapped with underneath a remote cabin in the Oregon wilderness.
Speaking about how he initially got involved with the movie, Thomas recalled that it was a chance meeting with Crawlspace writer and director L. Gustavo Cooper that led to him taking the role. “I had met Gustavo Cooper, the director, I had met him previously just socially in Los Angeles and he approached me and said, ‘Hey, I’ve got this movie. I think you’d be great for the lead.’ And I said, ‘Fantastic. Let me read the script.’ I thought the script was kind of like Home Alone in a basement and I said, ‘This could be really cool if we get the right people.’ And I think we got a great cast together and Paramount really was behind the film, and it was a small, low-budget action thriller that we made last summer and it’s kind of a summer movie.”
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Offering some details on the film’s plot, Thomas said of his character, Robert, “I’m in the wrong place at the wrong time and there’s some bad guys that want to get something and it’s down where I am in the crawlspace of this cabin.” He added, “I have to use my plumber resources that I have at hand and all my plumbing implements. I have to use those to kind of defend myself and defeat these guys. And there’s some funny dialogue and back and forth between Bradley Stryker and C. Ernst Harth who play the villains and Robert who’s trapped under here and trying to negotiate.”
Thomas then quipped, “It was a fun romp and man, those action movies hurt. That’s a tough six weeks of rolling around and getting thrown around by big dudes.” While the crawlspace was not actually underneath a cabin, Thomas said the set was no less easier to get around in. “They built a crawlspace set. It was cramped. You couldn’t stand up in it,” he explained. “It was like, I don’t know, like four feet high or something, but you could move walls out and you could get out easily, right.”
The then revealed, “I’m a little bit claustrophobic myself. So I was kind of going into this, I was like, ‘Man, this is either going to be a therapeutic next few weeks or a nightmare.’ And it was a little bit of both I think,” he said with a laugh.
Crawlspace is now available to rent or own from many online streaming retailers, such as Amazon Prime Video. It’s a perfect watch for the long 4th of July holiday weekend and is certain to be a fun watch for action movie fans. Keep it locked to PopCulture.com for all your movie news, review, and interviews!
