Jul 20, 2026 · 1 hr 16 min · 10 segments
Incubation is a home invasion thriller set during a pandemic with a series of surprise twists Powered by Firstory Hosting
Joshua LandGuest
Victor FinkGuest
I believe the virus we coined was HNV24, which I don't even know how we came up with that one, but that's the virus in the movie.
So yeah, the reason it's not, we didn't want it to be like explicitly COVID because we wanted it to be a bit more of a world changing,
that COVID wasn't a world changing virus, but you know, people, it didn't lead to the average person having to live off the grid in the middle of the woods.
Yeah, so it kind of was inspired a lot by certain online subcultures that kind of grew during the pandemic.
So there were certain groups that took isolation to a longer, more extreme duration than others, where instead of rejoining society with mass, social distancing, all the usual stuff, it was more like I'm going to pull my kids out of school and keep them out of school for an extended period of time even after they've reopened for a very long time like our lives are now permanently changed our lives are now you know we're completely isolated and cut off from society and that's I'm gonna raise my children so we just thought like I don't know, we figured we could, in horror, you take something that's sort of tangible and you try to bring it to its logical, to, you know, to its more extreme end.
So we were like, well, what would it be like to grow up completely, you know, completely isolated and completely off the grid and, you know, and then, you know, what could happen from there?
Yeah, the talk about how society has changed is interesting because the characters talk a lot about how society has changed and how they're isolated from it.
So the movie is about a family and the mother is the only character who is going out and interacting with society at large in the form of like going into town every now and then to get supplies, which is something that the characters talk about repeatedly during the film, but we never actually see.
And I was really interested in that.
I was wondering like, are we going to get to see the town? If we see the town, is it going to match the mother's descriptions of it? or is it going to be really different? And then the answer ends up being that, no, we don't see the town at all.
And I'm curious, like how much of that is that you like deliberately didn't want there to, like you wanted the only views on society that we get to be through the eyes of the different characters.
And we never get like any sort of objective view of it.
And how much is just, Like the difference in scale between having a movie set at a cabin in the woods versus having a movie set in an entire town where you would need to have dozens of extras and take over a street or something.
We wanted the viewer to see the film or to see the world through the eyes of Ethan, the protagonist.
Since he was stuck at the house or in the surrounding woods, we wanted the viewer to be there as well.
There were definitely logistical considerations to that as well we um it's uh you know it's a low budget uh indie thriller and and setting it all in one location definitely definitely makes sense we actually it's funny you mentioned going into town we i think josh we we kind of toyed with the idea of having an ending where where a few of the characters are actually looking at the outside world a little bit and you know walking around and we decided it just wasn't it was better just to keep it keep in the vicinity of the cabin but yeah if you have anything to add to that
no i i think that you said it correctly i mean i think the point like we really want the point was to see it from the kids perspective so if we had shown the mom in town and the different and that kind of stuff it kind of it kind of kills the uh the claustrophobic nature of the film yeah we kind of it kind of needs to feel like they're imprisoned um so like the second you know if the if the audience gets to leave then you kind of lose the perspective of what it's like to be the kid
yeah and you also yeah you might see some discrepancies and and instead and you know instead we're left with the kind of like uh the mystery just just trust mom that everything is is you know the way they talk about it
I believe the virus we coined was HNV24, which I don't even know how we came up with that one, but that's the virus in the movie.
So yeah, the reason it's not, we didn't want it to be like explicitly COVID because we wanted it to be a bit more of a world changing,
that COVID wasn't a world changing virus, but you know, people, it didn't lead to the average person having to live off the grid in the middle of the woods.
Yeah, so it kind of was inspired a lot by certain online subcultures that kind of grew during the pandemic.
So there were certain groups that took isolation to a longer, more extreme duration than others, where instead of rejoining society with mass, social distancing, all the usual stuff, it was more like I'm going to pull my kids out of school and keep them out of school for an extended period of time even after they've reopened for a very long time like our lives are now permanently changed our lives are now you know we're completely isolated and cut off from society and that's I'm gonna raise my children so we just thought like I don't know, we figured we could, in horror, you take something that's sort of tangible and you try to bring it to its logical, to, you know, to its more extreme end.
So we were like, well, what would it be like to grow up completely, you know, completely isolated and completely off the grid and, you know, and then, you know, what could happen from there?
Yeah, the talk about how society has changed is interesting because the characters talk a lot about how society has changed and how they're isolated from it.
So the movie is about a family and the mother is the only character who is going out and interacting with society at large in the form of like going into town every now and then to get supplies, which is something that the characters talk about repeatedly during the film, but we never actually see.
And I was really interested in that.
I was wondering like, are we going to get to see the town? If we see the town, is it going to match the mother's descriptions of it? or is it going to be really different? And then the answer ends up being that, no, we don't see the town at all.
And I'm curious, like how much of that is that you like deliberately didn't want there to, like you wanted the only views on society that we get to be through the eyes of the different characters.
And we never get like any sort of objective view of it.
And how much is just, Like the difference in scale between having a movie set at a cabin in the woods versus having a movie set in an entire town where you would need to have dozens of extras and take over a street or something.
We wanted the viewer to see the film or to see the world through the eyes of Ethan, the protagonist.
Since he was stuck at the house or in the surrounding woods, we wanted the viewer to be there as well.
There were definitely logistical considerations to that as well we um it's uh you know it's a low budget uh indie thriller and and setting it all in one location definitely definitely makes sense we actually it's funny you mentioned going into town we i think josh we we kind of toyed with the idea of having an ending where where a few of the characters are actually looking at the outside world a little bit and you know walking around and we decided it just wasn't it was better just to keep it keep in the vicinity of the cabin but yeah if you have anything to add to that
no i i think that you said it correctly i mean i think the point like we really want the point was to see it from the kids perspective so if we had shown the mom in town and the different and that kind of stuff it kind of it kind of kills the uh the claustrophobic nature of the film yeah we kind of it kind of needs to feel like they're imprisoned um so like the second you know if the if the audience gets to leave then you kind of lose the perspective of what it's like to be the kid
yeah and you also yeah you might see some discrepancies and and instead and you know instead we're left with the kind of like uh the mystery just just trust mom that everything is is you know the way they talk about it
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