Reminiscence is in theaters and on HBO Max now and it has a stellar cast including Hugh Jackman, Rebecca Ferguson and Thandiwe Newton. Not only that, it is the feature directorial debut of Westworld co-creator Lisa Joy.

The film centers on Nick Bannister (Jackman), described as “a private investigator of the mind” who “navigates the darkly alluring world of the past by helping his clients access lost memories. Living on the fringes of the sunken Miami coast, his life is forever changed when he takes on a new client, Mae (Ferguson). A simple matter of lost and found becomes a dangerous obsession. As Bannister fights to find the truth about Mae’s disappearance, he uncovers a violent conspiracy, and must ultimately answer the question: how far would you go to hold on to the ones you love?”.

Ahead of the film’s release, when S&A talked to the cast and Joy, she said the idea of memory was really the springboard for her concept for the film.

She explained to us, “I have always been really fascinated by the idea of memory, which is in itself kind of a weird, organic sci-fi concept, right? You’re time traveling in your own head. But there’s a degradation in the image quality of your memory over time. With the retelling and with the passage of time, it’s hard to hold even your own personal narrative straight in your head. It just morphs. And I was thinking about how wonderful it would be if you could actually travel fully back to the memories that you most charged, to feel them again and taste them and smell them, and really immerse yourself in that time. I thought, wouldn’t so many people at least venture in there occasionally?”

Jackman was intrigued by all of this when he read Joy’s script and then began thinking about how he would like see all of these ideas in a film.

“Before I read the script, Lisa came to my house and she told me the story of how she came to write it, why she was writing it,” Jackman told us. “She showed me some images that she had in her head. I was already super-intrigued, and then I was 20 pages into the script and I knew that I was going to do it because the writing is so good. The ideas are so good. I think what really intrigued me about it was how unique it was. I really felt I knew what the film was going to be [after] 10, 15 pages into reading it. And then I realized very quickly [that] I had no idea where it was going, and I thought that is something that I want as a moviegoer. I want something original, a type of movie I haven’t seen. I want to be surprised along the way, and then I want to think about it a few days later. So all those elements I felt were there. There’s thematically some really cool ideas on memory, nostalgia, some themes about climate change and about inequality and lots of things that are resonating to that. And at the same time, it’s part-romance. It’s part-sci-fi. It’s part-thriller. It’s part-action movie. I felt it had a confidence to it and it was a departure from anything I’d read or been in.”

Watch the interview with Jackman, Ferguson and Joy below:

Reminiscence is now in theaters and is also streaming for a limited amount of time on HBO Max.

MORE: Thandiwe Newton On ‘Massively Resisting’ Sci-Fi Thriller ‘Reminiscence’ And Defying Stereotypes

Lisa Joy

Get relevant content delivered to you once a week