The unknown stories that lie behind closed door often provide a thrilling allure to young people who are curious about diverse aspects of life in a modern city as they struggle to survive. The new movie, ‘7 Keys,’ is a dark thriller with unrelenting tension between its troubled protagonists. The duo is entranced by the energy and endless possibilities of not only their newfound connection, but also their ambivalent neighborhood in London – both aspects of which impacts their endurance to live.

Up-and-comer Joy Wilkinson made her feature film writing and directorial debut on ‘7 Keys,’ after she penned and helmed short films and television shows over the past two decades. The thriller stars Emma McDonald, Billy Postlethwaite, Kaylen Luke, Joey Akubeze, Amit Shah and Jane Goddard.

In ‘7 Keys,’ Daniel (Postlethwaite) has kept the keys to all the places he’s ever lived in London. After going on an impromptu first date with Lena (McDonald), she suggests that they use them to go on the ultimate property tour throughout the city. As a result, the two get to intimately know each other over the course of a wild weekend of in other people’s homes. But what begins as a risky fantasy soon becomes a deadly threat.

‘7 Keys’ had its World Premiere in the Visions Screening Section at last month’s SXSW. In honor of the movie premiering at the Austin-based festival, Wilkinson generously took the time to talk about scribing and helming the drama during an exclusive interview.

The conversation began with Wilkinson explaining why she was inspired to pen the script for the film. “Like Lena says in the film, I’ve always been really obsessed with other people’s homes and properties. From being a little kid, you’re programmed to think about, where am I going to live? Am I going to be able to afford to live in this world,?” she pointed out.

“So other people’s homes have always been a fascination for me. Keys also play into those mythic, magical qualities of those properties,” the writer continued.

“But the moment I remember being inspired to make this film was on 7/7 (in 2005), which was when there was the terrorist threat on London. Transportation shut down and I couldn’t get home. So I was thinking, where can I go?,” Wilkinson recalled.

“I then remembered that I had the keys in my bag to an office that I used to work in. Thankfully I didn’t have to go break in there and have erotic adventures,” the scribe noted.

“But it put the idea in my head that there are all of these corners to London that we do still have access to. So I started thinking about all of the people who still have keys to your house, and you haven’t changed the locks,” Wilkinson divulged. “So the idea started fermenting, and I just needed to know who those characters were.

“Then the other part of the puzzle came. I have a friend who’s a psychotherapist, and she was talking about how people at different ends of the emotional spectrum can actually be quite suited for each other,” the writer shared.

“So people who don’t feel a lot and are cut off from other people, versus people who are real empaths and feel too much, can compensate for each other’s lacks,” Wilkinson noted.

“That instantly clicked with the keys idea. I thought, I know how this ca play off. I then went on this journey, and the script just poured out, as I was discovering each of the characters as they were going around all of London,” the scribe shared.

“It just seemed like a fantastic way to explore relationships in a really condensed and genre-focused way, going from what initially seems to be a romantic comedy into a thriller into action and horror. The characters go on this whole odyssey around London,” Wilkinson added.

Besides penning the script, the filmmaker enjoyed the experience of then going on to direct the feature, after she helmed her previous shorts. “It’s really interesting because originally, I had written the script thinking that somebody else would direct,” she admitted.

“I kind of wanted to be a director when I was young. But like a lot of women, I didn’t have any sort of models out there, and didn’t think that was a job that I could do,” Wilkinson also revealed.

“So I went into writing, which is something that you can sort of hide away and do it yourself,” the director pointed out. “So it took me quite a long time to build my confidence and realize, oh, yes, that’s what I wanted to do.

“So I‘d written this script and it sort of ballooned, really, because it’s so high concept. It ballooned into a bigger version that was set in the States, and it was supposed to have someone else directing it,” Wilkinson divulged. “It did well and got me an agent over in the States and some work.

“But in the meantime, I was developing my own directing and doing the shorts. But at that point, I realized that it wasn’t going to happen in that bigger version,” the filmmaker admitted.

“I was ready to direct a feature myself, so I took it back and retooled it. I made it in the way that it was always supposed to be – the kind of very makeable, do it with in your friends’ houses, kind of movie, with actors that I’d worked with on the shorts,” Wilkinson recalled.

“Sometimes these things just turn out the way that they’re supposed to be. So there is this ghost of a version that’s in New York with megastars, but actually it’s meant to be this way,” the helmer noted.

“Emma and Billy are so incredible in it that it couldn’t be anybody else. Hopefully the movie will make them into megastars because I think they’re incredible,” Wilkinson added.

Further speaking about the actors who star in ‘7 Keys,’ particularly McDonald and Postlethwaite, the filmmaker discussed what the casting process was like for the project. “So Emma was actually in a play that I wrote called ‘The Sweet Signs of Bruising,’ and it was about Victorian lady boxers, of all things. She was incredible in that,” she shared.

“As soon as she came into the audition, I had that moment of, who is that? So I worked with her on that,” Wilkinson noted. “Then she was in the short film that I made, ‘The Everlasting Club.’

“I saw Billy in a production with her she was in – ‘Macbeth’ – and she was Lady Macbeth and Billy was Macbeth. They were just incredible together, and they were just setting the stage on fire,” the director recalled.

“I knew that I had this script and I was just thinking – that’s Daniel and Lena, and I have to get them for it,” Wilkinson declared.

“So I made the short with them both first and didn’t mention the feature. But at a certain point, when Emma had just come back from the States, she was the lead in a show called ‘Moonhaven’ on AMC, and I just managed to catch her when she was back over here,” the filmmaker shared.

“I sent her the script going, ‘You know, I’ve just been thinking about this,’ just thinking she might just turn me down flat. Later that day she’d read it really quickly and sent me a text that just said in capital letters, ‘We have to make this film.’ So I was over the moon,” Wilkinson divulged.

“From then, I got together with them and we spent a day or two workshopping it and evolving it to what they saw the characters as. We didn’t look back, really. They’re so collaborative that as I always say, it felt like they were always meant to be the ones” to star in the thriller, the helmer divulged.

Further speaking also about the collaboration she had with McDonald and Postlethwaite on ‘7 Keys,’ Wilkinson shared how she worked with the performers on developing their characters. “I think on a film where the budget is really tight and you don’t have a lot of time to do a lot of takes or to talk on set, you have to really make the most out of the preparation time you have together,” she shared.

“So we not only workshopped the script as it was developing, but we also had some sessions with a movement coach. During that time, we completely put the script aside and just worked through the evolution of those characters without words,” the filmmaker divulged.

“They go through such a journey in 93 minutes, including how Lena starts off to how she ends up. Daniel truly goes through the most major changes, though, from how he presents himself and the layers that are peeled back to the way he physically changes. That was a really exciting thing to do,” Wilkinson shared.

“That meant that on set we had a shorthand of what stage they were at because the movie wasn’t shot chronologically. So they had to remember every day what key we’re in and what tone that is and what genre that is because it switches throughout the story,” the director continued.

“So we did a lot of preparation for the feature. It helped that we’d done the short together, so that we had that kind of comfort and trust around each other, too,” Wilkinson added.

Also further speaking about working with the actors on creating their physicality for their roles, the filmmaker also embraced the experience of determining how the characters would move overall. “So we did the movement workshop, which was part of that physical language. But we also had an intimacy coordinator who we spent a day with, working out those more intimate scenes and really discovering where they were on the relationship scale.

“So you have that initial burst of lust. Then you have the discovery phase of how each other really works. Then you have the more intimate loving stage of relationships. So we did a lot of work to make sure they were in the right places,” Wilkinson shared.

“But since they’ve worked together before, the best thing was that Emma and Billy have that trust there. So you could go into a new location and let them play and find the physicality and how it fits into that room,” the helmer pointed out. “What could have been awkward with some other actors was just an absolute joy with them, as they discover a cool way to do that scene.”

With the seven different apartments being such an important part of the story, Wilkinson then delved into how she secured the locations for the movie. “That’s a good question because shooting in London is a real challenge on a tight budget. But our producers were just incredible,” she gushed about the producing team.

“About half the locations are the apartments of people that we know, who we sort of begged to lend us our houses. They don’t know what we’ve done in them until they see the film,” the filmmaker admitted.

“Then with the other ones, the hardest ones to get were the top end, as I didn’t know anybody with a penthouse,” Wilkinson divulged.

“It’s interesting – now a lot of the places on film location sites are very similar. They’re all in that middle bracket and there isn’t much at the top or in the bottom,” the director noted. “But our producers literally pounded the pavements and knocked on doors and managed to find all the locations we needed.

“Then the unit moves, and determining how we would get around to all those places on our tight schedule, was also difficult. But they managed to pull it off, and thankfully it all came together,” Wilkinson t shared.

After production on the thriller was completed, the filmmaker was ecstatic that ‘7 Keys’ had its World Premiere at SXSW. “Well, I still can’t quite believe it…it’s such a dream. It’s absolutely the right festival for it. It’s such a cool festival, and full of movie lovers.

“I (was) really excited to take it there. I haven’t been before. My producer Cassandra Sigsgaard took a film there a few years ago, so she’s much more familiar with it on the ground. But everything I’ve heard about it indicates that it’s just the best time, and there are really good film fans there. So I (couldn’t) wait to go!,” Wilkinson concluded.