Yoko Okumura on the Colorful Visual Style of THE LAST KISS
By Shannon McGrew
In director Yoko Okumura’s latest film THE LAST KISS, a fantasy turns into a nightmare when Laurel (Mckenna Grace) discovers she’s cursed with an ability to see the death of anyone she kisses. After a vision reveals her crush is doomed to die in a strange murder spree targeting her closest friends, she races to try to unmask the killer before the mystery becomes a massacre.
For the home premiere of THE LAST KISS, Creepy Kingdom’s Shannon McGrew spoke with director Yoko Okumura. During their chat, they discussed everything from bringing color and vibrancy to horror to the symbolic imagery of birds seen in the film and the emotional experience she hopes audiences take away from the movie.
Thank you so much for speaking with me today, Yoko! I love how colorful and vibrant your films are, especially because horror so often leans toward darker, more muted visuals. What draws you to using such bold visual language, and how did you use color and vibrancy to shape the world of THE LAST KISS?
Yoko Okumura: I’m a visual person. In my own personal life, I love color and playing with color and building colorful palettes. It’s always come naturally to me to build cinematic universes that are slightly elevated from the real world, and very curated and narrow, specific palettes of color make me really happy to build.
As a fan of horror films, I find that darkness, shadows, and a brown, black, and red palette can be super effective. It’s classic. But I love the challenge of building something beautiful and colorful and seeing the darkness underneath or around it. The grit and glamour coming together is something that’s very evocative for me, so I always try to build that contrast. Beauty and terror often live together in the same world, so I love to represent that in my films, and specifically in THE LAST KISS, because of the mythology we’re talking about when it comes to kissing and what kissing has meant throughout history to people, and especially to young girls and teenagers and their first kiss. That naturally lends itself to many of our contemporary generations, like Disney films, and the mythology around kissing in Disney films, and obviously with animation, the colorful, vibrant worlds are so important.
We took a lot of inspiration from Sleeping Beauty, especially when building the death flashes around Maleficent's colors. The best friend character, Poppy, is sort of our quasi-fairy godmother character, who was always going to be a colorful, fashion-girly character.
What I loved about this film is that it suggests that our trauma, our memories, our past, can ultimately be more frightening than the killer itself. What did you want to say about trauma through the language of a slasher film?
Yoko Okumura: When I read the script, I’m like, yeah, the inciting incident really is this accident, right? This kind of physical and mental trauma that these really young people go through. They thought they were having the time of their lives and thought they were safe, and then all of a sudden the world comes crashing down around them.
I think that maybe the last 10 years or so of horror films have really leaned really hard into the metaphor of trauma, horror as trauma, and there are so many that are very effective and so powerful. Zach Cregger also talked about how we’ve kind of overdone trauma and horror. So for me, I wasn’t really leaning into this movie being about trauma.
The aspect I leaned into was the idea that people might feel broken. Laurel having this kissing curse where she is able to see how people die when she kisses them is something that makes her fear that she may be broken forever. That, to me, is very relatable, whether that comes from trauma or something else, or from a curse, or from certain personality traits that any individual might have. I think that’s something I’ve felt before, that maybe I’m broken and I’ll never love again. That was really personal to me, and I wanted to put it into the character of Laurel and what she’s pondering about what’s going on with her.
I couldn’t have loved this cast more, especially because it felt like there was a real, genuine connection between everyone. What was the casting process like, and how did you know you found the right group of actors to bring that chemistry to life?
Yoko Okumura: I felt like I got so lucky with this incredible ensemble cast, and, of course, the anchor in this cast is our lead, McKenna Grace. She was the first we cast, so we cast around her to see what chemistry she had with her love interests and her best friend.
Once we knew McKenna was going to be our Laurel, we did chemistry reads with Evan (Jaden Michael), the love interest, and with the actress playing Poppy (Arkira Chantaratananond), the best friend. We did those chemistry reads in person, not online, to see what felt most natural and authentic, which helped build those relationships and the characters around them. But there are so many other characters like Bree (Eve Edwards), Chuck (Cooper Levy), Leo (Joseph Chiu), and Zolly (Jorel Hoffert). We had a blast casting everybody. Most of the cast, except for Jaden Michael, Arkira Chantaratananond, and McKenna Grace, were all Canadian actors, so we had a really great time doing some Canadian casting.
I’ve mostly worked with adult actors, and these are young adults, but part of me was kind of nervous, like, “Oh, what if they don’t like each other?” or “What if somebody feels left out?” I was a little nervous because you never know with group dynamics. But it melted my heart how genuinely they seemed to connect. They sang songs, played guitar, and went around town in their free time. That bond was created off set and on set.
I know you have a particular affinity for birds, which made the red birds in the hospital scenes especially striking. What drew you to that imagery, and what did you want the birds to represent within the story?
Yoko Okumura: Birds have been told in many, many stories and mythologies as messengers. You have a keen eye to see that. I don’t want to give anything away, but birds are very special to me, and they certainly have a lot of symbolism in culture and stories, and this story is no different. But that’s not the only place we had a little birdie.
In the opening sequence with the storybook opening, we paid homage to Disney storybooks. I had a little parrot drawn in there if anybody wants to look for that Easter egg: a little birdie. It’s subtle, but it’s in there. That was a very specific request I made to Taylor Dolan, our incredible illustrator and artist in Ireland. I asked her to put a little bird in one of the frames.
This other one's very subtle. I recorded my baby Melon, a Senegal parrot currently in Indiana being babysat by my parents, chirping. I sent my composer, Tangelene Bolton, that recording, and she used Melon's sound in one part of the score. It’s very subtle, so it’s not something you can really hear, but it’s in there.
What are you most excited for people to experience with this film, and what do you hope they are thinking about when they leave the theater?
Yoko Okumura: I really hope people have fun. I wanted to build a mystery thrill ride that’s colorful, fun, dashing, romantic, and a little heartbreaking. It’s always important for me to make sure the emotional journey of the characters is really relatable and grounded. But around that, I like to add a little operatic absurdity or comedy. I want to entertain people, so I hope they can sit down with friends and family, put this on during the holidays, Valentine’s Day, or Halloween. It should really feel like a sleepover movie for people of any age. I hope people watch it, form theories about who the killer could be, talk about them, and then get surprised at the end. When they finish the movie, I hope they walk away feeling a little lighter.
When I watch movies that really offer me an experience, whether that’s a funny one, a sad one, or a horrific one, I come out of it having the feeling like I had been immersed. I really did travel to a new place, living through the eyes of these other characters. I often feel renewed after a really good film experience, and I hope people feel that way in whatever way they need or want. I hope they can feel like, “Oh, yeah, that movie actually kinda gave me something, and I feel a little more energized in life by it.”
THE LAST KISS is available now on digital retail platforms.
