Immediately at the start of Nathan Shepka’s newest film, Dead Before They Wake, there are clear allusions and odes to some of the classic action films from not just the United Kingdom but from around the world. Following his 2023 film, Lock & Load, Shepka returned to the action genre. Although his previous films had more of a blend between action and comedy, Dead Before They Wake is exclusively dark and gritty.
Set in Glasgow, the film follows a nightclub bouncer named Alex as he traverses the underground world of sex trafficking. While Alex’s quest to stop a sex trafficking gang, the film veers off in interesting directions, especially when it comes to portraying the criminals’ lives outside of their shady businesses.
Shepka, the star, director, writer and producer of the film, recently spoke with Film Obsessive staff writer Henry O’Brien about the production, characters and inspirations for Dead Before They Wake. The transcript below the video has been edited for space and clarity.
Film Obsessive: Before I start off with any big questions, could I just have you do a brief synopsis of your film for our audience?
Nathan Shepka: Sure. So basically, the film follows a nightclub bouncer called Alex. He’s a bit of a loner, kind of lives by night in a way. And in between regular visits from a sex worker and going to visit his deaf dad in a care home, he obviously goes out at night, mans the door of clubs, etc. And then one night, a retired lawyer finds him and asks him if he will help track down a missing teenage girl that they suspect has been snared by a sex trafficking ring. And that kind of leads them into this murky world of trafficking, of the grooming gang and things kind of unfold and the violence and the stakes dial up towards the end.
There were plenty of inspirations to go around, but I was definitely thinking of early 70s action films. Were there any films or shows that served as inspiration or was your mind while making this?
I mean, I guess, yeah, some of the sort of 70s vigilante movies like Death Wish and Dirty Harry, stuff like that. There’s a British TV show called Three Girls, which was a miniseries and that was based on two real life grooming gangs down south in England, which is kind of where we’ve drawn inspiration for the actual setup of how the grooming gangs operate. So that was kind of taken from reality to make that part of it at least as realistic as possible. And then probably the other film was You Were Never Really Here. That’s kind of a bit more arthouse and it shies away from showing the violence, which I think they said that they did intentionally, whereas ours plays into it a bit more. Obviously, in the indie sector, you kind of have to give the audience a bit more of a payoff. If you go to arthouse, then it’s not quite as commercial. And I felt that people would probably want to see the bad guys get their comeuppance. And so that’s kind of what it what it builds to.
Where did the idea for this bouncer Alex come from? How did you make him a more rounded character?
I guess part of it was I kind of wanted to play a character that was a bit different from what I usually do. They’re usually kind of upbeat and laced with a bit of humor. But I kind of wanted to do something that was a guy who was a bit of a loner, a bit of an outcast and a bit of an introvert, and I suppose that’s where that came from. But obviously, he’s got this sort of violence, or tendency for violence, bubbling under the surface. And it just so happens that the situation that he’s drawn into kind of pushes his buttons. There’s the old kind of man-driven-to-the-edge kind of thing. I mean, I didn’t want to make him superhuman or walking into a room and beating up 10 guys. I wanted to kind of keep the violence relatively realistic just along with the story because I think if I took the story from reality and then the action was straight out of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Commando, then they wouldn’t have matched up.
Do you find a connection more to the protagonists who are much more human and aren’t superhuman in the sense it’s kind of a struggle for them to fight a person?
I think it was either (Sylvester) Stallone or (Jean-Claude) Van Damme that said that the underdog was always interesting. Everyone would sort of root for the underdog. I suppose that’s in a physical sense. But I think that the most interesting protagonists in films are the ones that are flawed. If you look at the likes of Taxi Driver, which this is kind of inspired by as well, or even characters like (Martin) Riggs in Lethal Weapon. He’s suicidal, he’s an alcoholic. The same with Die Hard Bruce Willis’ character, John McClane; he’s an alcoholic, he’s dysfunctional, he’s irrational at times. So I think that those flawed protagonists make for more interesting characters because no one really is black-and-white. You can’t kind of go, “This person’s completely good,” and the bad guys aren’t completely bad. So one of the things we kind of wanted to do was even though the perpetrators in this film were doing some really horrible things, we also wanted to show that these people also had functioning lives and families outside of this really horrible stuff that they were doing. And that’s something that always has kind of fascinated me; everyone’s actually a shade of gray. No one’s completely good (or) completely bad.
To that, what was it like trying to balance all these separate subplots?
I mean, I guess part of that was to try and show that even people, criminals have normal lives of families and they do this really horrible stuff, but then go home and almost act like nothing’s going on. And I also wanted to bring a bit of humanity or at least a bit of background to those characters because, obviously, it’s quite a sensitive subject, and I didn’t want to be accused of portraying very one-dimensional villains or caricatures. I wanted to give them some kind of depth.
There was the one trafficker named Amar and his own daughter. What went into incorporating a strict father who had this deep criminal background?
I think for him, he sort of sees what he’s doing as a business and can kind of disconnect from it. But he obviously is a sociopath and lacks a lot of empathy. I mean, he’s obviously quite hard on his own daughter in the film. And that’s sort of the irony — he wants to keep her pure and stop her from doing any of the stuff that he’s basically perpetrating unbeknownst to them. I mean, there was also a bit of religion in there as well, and religious beliefs. But then, coming away from that, what they did was totally against what they believed or what they were doing in their family setup. So I suppose part of that, aside from showing a bit of depth to the characters, was also to portray a bit of an irony there.
What makes Glasgow such a compelling city to shoot and make movies in? Because it did feel very true to shooting in and around Scotland.
I mean, I guess one of the reasons, (the) very basic reason as to why we shoot here is because we live here. But it’s a good place to shoot. You can get good production values for the money compared to other areas down south in the likes of London. Glasgow’s got a lot of great locations. Whether you want to go picturesque or whether you want to go gritty like we did. I know that a lot of U.S. productions come over here and kind of fake it for the U.S., which, again, is relatively easy to do. But yeah, I think we obviously showed quite a grimy side to the city. So it doesn’t necessarily show Scotland in a good light or Glasgow in a good light. But again, it’s obviously not what we’re trying to portray. But it’s one of those cities or places that you could literally make a breezy romantic comedy here and then something really dark like this.

What makes Dead Before They Wake stand out amongst your three previous films, including Lock and Load, When Darkness Falls and Holiday Monday?
I guess with those ones, they were a little bit more light-hearted. When Darkness Falls kind of is and isn’t. I mean, Dead Before They Wake is pretty humorless overall. Even When Darkness Falls had breaks of humor. But really, for me, it was to try and have people take us seriously as filmmakers and not pigeonhole as a sort of low-budget action entertainment kind of thing and look at us as people who have got the ability to make something a bit more serious and gritty. And that’s the kind of stuff that typically I’m drawn to anyway. I mean, I like all the sort of the naff action stuff as well and I will do that again. But I do like sort of gritty, realistic thrillers as well. So it was really just about doing something different, and I suppose, not ending up in a box, so to speak.
Do you feel like just since you’ve been getting a lot of films under your belt as a director, do you think you are at a point where now you’re more experienced and you want to try something different with your future projects?
Yeah, I think so. And I think that the cast in this one was really good. So I think that if you surround yourself by people that you don’t have to give a lot of direction, you can kind of concentrate on the story elements or the the visuals or whatever. So, yeah, I mean, certainly in the future, the better the cast, the more you can kind of concentrate and do all that other stuff and those little things that make it a better film. And actually, the ideal is to have people come in and kind of take a bit of weight off just by being so, so good at what they do.
Talk to me about co-director Andy Crane’s contribution to the film. What were some of the key aspects he brought to the film?
Andy, I’ve been working with for about 10 years now, right back when we used to make short films. Andy’s got a great eye for detail and shot framing and composition and stuff like that. And he’s also got quite a good intuition for what works or what doesn’t in a scene; something just doesn’t play in quite right. And obviously, because I act as well sometimes, you’re not stepping back and seeing that from the outside because you’re in the scene, whereas he does. And you know, he’d asked if it was okay if he could be co-director and put a bit more of his stamp on it. And we work really well together and kind of bounce off each other. So he obviously brings a lot of creativity visually, but he has got some really good ideas for how scenes should play out and what kind of needs change and something to make it better.
And you have two more films coming up the pipeline soon, just talk to me about that.
Yeah. So we’ve got another film coming out on the 17th of February in the U.S. and the U.K., which is, I guess, another bit of a departure. It’s sort of a slow-burn, atmospheric, Gothic mystery horror called The Baby in the Basket. And it’s set in the 1940s and it’s basically about nuns in this convent during a storm during World War II. This sort of remote convent, and one night, a shadowy figure leaves a baby in a basket on the step. They take it in to care for it until the storm passes, and then one of the more impressionable nuns starts to believe that the baby is actually the spawn of Satan and they lock her up because they think she’s been driven insane. But then all this stuff starts to happen, where they begin to question their own faith in reality. So yeah, again, that’s a bit of a bit of a different one. And then we’re working on a thriller right now that we’re just about to put into production, something a little bit kind of Alfred Hitchcock. So hopefully that will be ready some point, maybe middle of next year.
This has been Nathan Shepka. He is the actor, writer, director and producer — boy, you are a busy man — for Dead Before They Wake. Nathan, thank you so much again.
Cheers, Henry. I appreciate it.