Let’s play a game called, “How much tension can we stuff into one room, with only two actors, and make a feature film out of it?” Earlier this year, the hit film out of Australia called Monolith managed to use only one performer, and coincidentally, the writer-directors of behind You’ll Never Find Me — also Australian, with just two performers — know the director of Monolith, though their new feature is an entirely different premise. Both are equally bone-chilling and thrilling in their own ways, and lucky for you, You’ll Never Find Me drops on Shudder this week.

Don’t miss it, all you horror fans out there — especially if you enjoy films laced with paranoia, mind-melting plot twists, and much more. We recently caught up with Indianna Bell and Josiah Allen, the directors of You’ll Never Find Me, to learn more about how they achieved such a gripping end result with such a seemingly straightforward premise. Don’t let the simplicity fool you!

That Epic Title: ‘Like Naming a Baby’
You’ll Never Find Me Release Date June 10, 2023 Director Josiah Allen , Indianna Bell Cast Brendan Rock , Jordan Cowan , Elena Carapetis , Angela Korng , Luca Trimboli , Finn Watson Runtime 96 Minutes Writers Indianna Bell Studio Someone Like U Productions, Stakeout Films

To try and explain why exactly their new film is titled You’ll Never Find Me might just reveal spoilers and ruin the experience for those who haven’t seen it yet. “It took us a long time to find the right title for this film,” Allen told MovieWeb. “For a while, it was called Lot 14, which was just kind of a working title. And it really wasn’t until we were in the edit that we landed on You’ll Never Find Me, which, when we came up with it, we just went, ‘Finally!’ It was kind of like naming a baby.”

Related: 15 Best Psychological Thrillers of All Time, Ranked

As showcased in their new film, “less is more” sometimes. Sure, it all takes place in one spot in the Australian outback, but there are lots of grander-scale projects out there that are far less compelling than You’ll Never Find Me. “The nature of doing a micro-budget, and it being in a single location, we knew it was going to be really dialogue-heavy,” said Allen, who added:

But also… we knew we had these two really great actors who had a lot of theater experience, so we thought we could really utilize those to our advantage. That was very much built into the design of kind of reverse-engineering this concept of the script to these two actors.

Influences Moving from a Short Film to a Feature

Fun fact: Allen and Bell made a short film before this that happened to star the two leads of You’ll Never Find Me, Brendan Rock and Jordan Cowan. “While we were filming The Recordist, we were kind of, in the back of our minds, going, ‘Wouldn’t it be great to make a feature?'” said Bell, who also wrote You’ll Never Find Me in addition to directing. “When we saw how good their chemistry on-screen was together, and how well we all work together, and just how brilliant of actors they are, we thought, ‘OK, well, what’s stopping us from writing a script around these two actors?’ And so that’s exactly what we did.”

And the end result is smashing success of a thrill ride. You can’t help but see the influence of past filmmakers and classics shine through in You’ll Never Find Me. “We just went and watched a lot of single-location, not even necessarily thrillers or horrors. It was like really contained, micro-budget films like the Duplass brothers films, and The Retreat,” said Bell. “Films like The Lighthouse, how they can tell a story in a single location, with two actors, and it’s just so atmospheric and weird and suspenseful and funny… those really off-kilter films like that.” She continued:

“But then also films like
Buried
with Ryan Reynolds… And the thing that we actually did go back to quite a bit was an episode of
The Haunting of Hill House
: ‘Two Storms,’ which is that really amazing episode that’s the two storms: happening in the past, when they’re in that big mansion, and then in the present, when they’re in the funeral home. And we looked at that a lot just because we thought the sound design was awesome.”

Related: The Best Australian Horror Movies, Ranked

Allen continued off Bell’s remarks:

One of the films that we’ve always loved
is called
It Comes at Night

, for example. We loved that that was actually a very human story, and all the tension came from human interreactions… And we’re both obsessed with David Fincher films, with certain feelings of discomfort.

Australian Indie Horror

Plus, the acclaimed film Monolith might also come to mind, especially since it came out just recently. And no, all Australians don’t know each other, but we couldn’t help but mention the connection, especially given the micro-budget nature of both thrillers. “We do know him,” said Allen about Monolith director Matt Vesely. “That film’s awesome. Just seriously amazing what he pulled off in a single location.”

Bell echoed the sentiment:

“That was something that we have seen in recent times that was, again, made by an Australian for a low budget, and amazing what they pulled off. So yeah, we thought that was really brilliant, and we want to encourage people to go see that film because it’s definitely worth it.”

Having done awards-caliber shorts like the aforementioned The Recordist and now striking horror-junkie gold with You’ll Never Find Me, the success story of Allen and Bell as a pair can serve as an inspiration for aspiring filmmakers everywhere — especially those looking for a writing/directing partner. “Initially, at university, at film school, we kind of were just paired together, and we naturally gravitated to doing more and more stuff together, because Indianna was writing, and she had done a lot of drama stuff at school,” Allen explained to us. “She was more naturally working with the actors with script translation and everything like that.”

“And then I was, at the time, a lot more visual,” continued Allen. “So I was storyboarding, and I would edit everything at the time. And yeah, over the years, we’ve just continued to work together because we really enjoy it. And that gap has kind of slowly shrunk. And she’s really involved with storyboarding… It’s just a constant conversation. And I guess that’s the point. It really takes the pressure off, because the pressure is, of course, the most stressful thing about filmmaking. So for all the decisions to be passed through two people, all problems get halved. You get to share all the positives together.”

And when you’re really tired in the middle of a long shoot, we can look at each other, and we know exactly what we need to do to adjust a moment. And it’s whoever can articulate it the quickest in that moment. We just go and do it. It’s really that we can just be two friends creating stuff together. And that’s kind of the dream.

You’ll Never Find Me starts streaming on Shudder Friday.