Still: Straight Outta Space - Michael Middelkoop

“Never work with animals or children,” the curmudgeonly comedian WC Fields once famously advised. In his new feature, Straight Outta Space**, Golden Calf-winning director Michael Middelkoop boldly uses both.

The sci-fi horror, comedy-drama (world premiere in Karlovy Vary’s Midnight Program sidebar) unfolds in a Dutch housing estate under threat from an alien virus that turns anyone contaminated into a vomit-spewing zombie-like psychotic. 

“What was nice about it was that we had a long scouting process for finding the right dog,” Middelkoop says of the mixed breed pug that features so prominently in the movie. “We actually used three separate versions of the dog. The first was a very fluffy, clean version of the breed. That was the most tame…the second was a bit more shaggy and was actually the one we used for when the alien virus has started to take over. This dog just wouldn’t listen to us! The third dog was the most picture perfect because that was a puppet - and we had full control over it.”

As for the twin children, that’s probably the legacy of the director watching The Shining too many times when he was young. 

This is a film with multiple layers. You can see it as a Covid satire; as a film highlighting class tension and racial inequality in the Netherlands; as a Spielberg-like sci-fi adventure or as an homage to Shaun Of The Dead. There’s even a taste of Ridley Scott’s Alien.

“Of course, these types of films are always in dialogue with a larger universe, both cinematic and pop cultural,” the director acknowledges his many influences. “When you step into this genre, you start to look at the big brothers and sisters, the classics like, of course, the great work of Edgar Wright and the iconic work of Steven Spielberg that raised me.”

He adds, though, that the real starting point was simply “a hunger to tell a story about underdogs in a specific social environment.”

Middelkoop and his co-writers then provided the two street welfare officers who pass for the film’s heroes, Amin (Shahine El-Hamus) and Mitchell (Daniël Kolf), with the biggest antagonists imaginable - namely aliens from outer space. 

This might be an action-comedy rooted in very Dutch deadpan humour but it’s addressing serious themes. Middelkoop was inspired by Jordan Peele’s 2017 horror pic, Get Out, which showed him that you can scare audiences and make them laugh, while dealing with serious social issues at the same time.

“I make movies for the buckets of popcorn but I hope that when you leave the cinema, you think about something.”

Covid made the filmmakers re-think the project. They decided that if an alien virus broke out in a working-class neighbourhood like Schijndrecht (a fictional name), the government would probably “try to contain it, build a wall around it [the neighbourhood] rather than help and risk infection.”

The visual effects are both ingenious…and self-consciously cheesy.  “Our strength in the Netherlands is that we do great youth films and we do great dramas,” Middelkoop admits the Dutch aren’t known for their sci-fi. Budget constraints have deflected them away from the genre. However, he was able to work with top-notch technicians, several of whom had done effects on award-winning family sci-fi film Captain Nova (2021).

“I talked to them and said let’s turn our weakness into our strength,” the director remembers. “We are not going to try to be Spielberg because we don’t have Spielberg money.” He talks of the “street smart, streetwise nature of the film,” and its “B-movie vibe…I wanted them [audiences] to see the fun we had in making it. We tried to charm our way out of it.”

Straight Outta Space was produced by Lemming Film, the renowned Dutch company best known for its art house pictures and co-productions. It received backing at an early stage from Amazon Prime. Canadian outfit Attraction Distribution is handling world sales while Independent Films is releasing the film in the Netherlands. 

As for all that vomiting, the filmmakers hadn’t seen Triangle Of Sadness with its famous retching scenes when they started work on the project, However, Middelkoop took inspiration from UK comedy Guest House Paradiso (1999). “They had this scene where everybody becomes ill. You actually have a very young Simon Pegg who projectile vomits…I really liked the way it looked.”

He credits veteran special effects technician Rob Hillenbrink with designing all “the different vomit devices for us.”

Middelkoop himself grew up in a housing estate not unlike the one shown in the movie. He talks of poor transport links - often the estates will have only one subway line as if the town planners have deliberately made it difficult to reach them. “That’s how it feels.” 

The main shooting location was Schalkwijk in Haarlem - and the filmmakers made full use of its walkways and underground car parks. They also filmed in glossy futuristic offices belonging to wealthy tech and software companies.

Now, the director is preparing a kids’ movie, Idje Doesn’t Want A Haircut, which will again be made with Lemming Film, about a young boy with a lot of curly hair who receives a comb from his grandmother that gives him magical powers. He is also working on an adaptation of the Dutch bestseller Alleen Met de Goden (Alone With The Gods) by Alex Boogers. This will be produced by Family Affair Films and is scripted by Chris Westendorp.

Find out more about Karlovy Vary here.

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*film supported by the Netherlands Film Fund
**supported by the Netherlands Film Fund and Netherlands Production Incentive