Carla Gugino Reveals Why She Was Drawn to Haunting New Movie “Lockbox” Despite Horror Not Being Her ‘Spirit Genre’ (Exclusive)
Carla Gugino Reveals Why She Was Drawn to Haunting New Movie “Lockbox” Despite Horror Not Being Her ‘Spirit Genre’ (Exclusive)
Scott HuverFri, July 3, 2026 at 7:20 PM UTC
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Carla Gugino in 'Lockbox'Credit: Courtesy of AURA Entertainment -
Carla Gugino says her new film Lockbox blends intense family drama with supernatural horror in a surprising and subtle way
The Spy Kids star was drawn to the film's grounded story of reinvention and faith despite horror not being her go-to genre
The actress credits horror's passionate fan base and emotional depth for making the genre rewarding to explore
Carla Gugino is adding to her already substantial horror film resume, but her latest effort Lockbox hit her a little differently: it felt like an intense family drama — until the supernatural scares kicked in.
“I think what surprised me was that it starts small,” Gugino, 54, tells PEOPLE exclusively, noting how her new film opens with her character Ellen rebuilding her life in a new small town after a long stint serving as her late mother's caretaker. Ellen soon finds herself taking in her severely traumatized cousin (Lou Taylor Pucci), even as she wonders if he might pose a danger to himself and those around him — including Ellen herself. “When you start the movie, you're like, ‘Oh, are we just watching a small character drama?'”
“[Lockbox] starts with the stuff of real life, just family guilt, choice, reinvention,” says Gugino. “There's usually only a couple times in our life where we really start these chapters. In Ellen's case, she has a mother who she's been caretaking for a number of years who's gone and you realize, ‘Oh wow, my whole purpose for that period of time in life was this. What is my purpose now?' She had to give up work to do that so she's starting totally anew.”
Carla Gugino and Jed Rees in 'Lockbox'Credit: Courtesy of AURA Entertainment
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“And then it morphs into something bigger, into something that we can't fight with reason; all of a sudden what happens to you when the rules of your life no longer work to solve the problem? And that's real horror,” the Spy Kids star adds. “In the midst of this is this woman who is kind but not naive, who has faith, real faith, which I think is so hard to have in the world, and that's going to kind of be her beacon throughout… So I found this, the way the structure of this works, to be really surprising and subtle.”
In recent years, Gugino has found an abundance of success in the horror genre, particularly in the streaming projects helmed by writer-director Mike Flanagan, including Gerald's Game, based on the Stephen King novel; The Haunting of Hill House miniseries, loosely adapted from the Shirley Jackson story; and The Fall of the House of Usher miniseries, inspired by the works of Edgar Allan Poe.
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She didn't set out to be a Scream Queen, but the grounded-ness of director Daniel Stamm's Lockbox, which features a surprising turn into an unexpected horror sub-genre, compelled her to sign on.
Carla Gugino in 'Lockbox'Credit: Courtesy of AURA Entertainment
“Though I've done a lot of horror, that's not like my ‘spirit genre,'” Gugino admits. “It's not that I gravitate towards horror. I just have really loved collaborating with Mike Flanagan because I think he's just an amazing storyteller and that happens to be horror. And there's just great female characters particularly so often in horror..,It's really interesting to have a sort of quote-unquote ordinary woman at the center of a story like this.”
Like lovers of graphic novel adaptations who've connected to her earlier works like Sin City and Watchmen, Gugino finds that horror audiences are “a really invested and a really passionate fan base... People watch [the Flanagan projects] over and over and over again, and there's such attention to detail and he leaves these beautiful Easter eggs that everybody picks up on. And you're experiencing each one of these projects with the audience because they have their own relationships to it.”
She's enjoyed engaging with fans and learning how they've been affected by the works she's appeared in, many of whom have related to her characters because they share a common or similar trauma.
“These are these larger themes in life that people really relate to,” says Gugino. “And I think that horror allows you as an actor to explore very heightened emotion and reveal humanity through that. This one's interesting because this is not the traumatized character. This is the character that's actually dealing with characters with trauma.”
Lockbox is now in theaters.
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Source: “AOL Entertainment”
