PopHorror Let's Get Scared
Adam Finberg is the writer and director behind the haunting and timely sci-fi drama Star People, which hits theaters on July 25 and arrives on VOD August 12. Set against the sweltering backdrop of the Arizona desert during a deadly heatwave, the film blends real-life mystery with deeply human drama — centering on Claire, a photographer still haunted by the legendary Phoenix Lights UFO sighting she witnessed as a child in 1997.
As Claire, played by Kat Cunning, embarks on a desert journey with her UFO-obsessed semi-boyfriend (Connor Paolo) and estranged brother (McCabe Slye), her search for truth collides with the urgent struggles of a displaced immigrant family.
Interview with Star People Director Adam Finberg
PopHorror: What inspired you to build a narrative around the real-life Phoenix Lights incident? Was it something you personally experienced or were haunted by growing up in Arizona?
Adam Finberg: A little bit, yeah. I mean, I grew up in Phoenix. And when the Phoenix Lights happened, I was in high school. I didn’t see them, but I remembered very well. I had some close family friends who witnessed it. And through the years, I’ve met others who have seen them, who had witnessed it as well. And everyone I’ve spoken to that had seen them directly were very moved by what they saw.
And I think that had just always been an interesting jumping-off point for me to tell a story. Also, just because it taps into this sort of what I think is a universal sort of human experience of trying to seek, search for meaning, search for the greater purpose, which is kind of what UFOs sort of represent for a lot of people.
PopHorror: Well, it seems like a lot of different areas of the world have some version of that. I’m in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, and we have the Paulding Lights over here. And a local university tested that out and found out that it was just the headlights of cars passing by. So, has anybody really done investigations into what those lights are?
Adam Finberg: Well, there have been a lot of documentary and TV series that have investigated them through the years, if you look up things on the Phoenix Lights. And there’s never been a definitive answer because some explanations might fit some of the witness accounts, but not others. To me, it’s really interesting because of that. There is not a definitive account.
And in Arizona, it’s talked about every year since it happened, pretty much because it’s still this sort of lingering mystery that just doesn’t quite have a resolution to it.
PopHorror: Sure. And I suppose I should ask about the movie itself. So, Claire’s obsession with the lights feels both spiritual and psychological. How did you approach portraying that internal quest without going fully into sci-fi or fantasy?
Adam Finberg: Well, I was influenced a lot by an experience I had directing a documentary called The Business of Recovery, which is a documentary about treating addictions.
I did this about 10 years ago. And in doing that film, I met a lot of people who were struggling with traumas and addiction, some of whom unfortunately passed away during the making of the film. Others, after the film was finished — that was just the sad reality of the state of things, that there’s a lot of untreated trauma out there.
And that experience, I think, haunted me a bit, because I kind of always was trying to make sense of it, because nothing was really changing about this sort of problem — this pain that’s sort of out there, I guess the best way to describe it.
And so when I started writing these characters, I just found myself being drawn to these stories that I had heard and just having the trauma be the core of their characters.
And how they dealt with it diverged — the brother and sister — but I think that’s where a lot of that came from.
Star People and the Immigration Angle
PopHorror: And the movie has themes of immigration, of course, which makes it very timely.
How did you come up with that concept for the film to include those themes?
Adam Finberg: Well, it’s interesting that it’s so timely, because this was written a few years ago that I started writing the script…It feels very, very timely…I think, because stories about immigration have been a part of this country since its inception, because we are a country of immigrants.
I think that growing up in Arizona, stories about immigration were always something you would read about, or I remember reading about, because we’re a border state. And people would be dying in the desert. And these people trying to escape violence of one form or another was a constant thing you would hear about.
And I just think the fear of the unknown is a very common theme — when it comes to UFO stories, but also migration stories, demonization of things we don’t understand or things we don’t know. So those just sort of seemed to intersect for me. And the story wasn’t trying to make any specific political statement as much as it was just a story of human connection
The Cast and Characters of Star People
PopHorror: And Kat Cunning — she plays an intense character, kind of who’s driven by this desire to get the truth of what the lights represent. So how did the production decide to cast her in that role?
Adam Finberg: Well, that was one of the biggest choices I got to make as a director. I mean, casting choices are probably one of the most consequential decisions in directing a film. It’s really that: who am I going to choose to be that character?
I think when I saw Kat’s performance, it really jumped off the screen for me — because a lot of the auditions nowadays are all digital. I’m not in the room with them. We are in different states. I was watching it and it was so compelling when I was seeing the performance that I was very excited. I knew on set we were going to get something really amazing. Kat is also a musician and did all the vocals and co-wrote the final track, “Constellation,” that’s in the film. Kat collaborated with my composer on that track, Reza Safinia.
PopHorror: So obviously there’s her brother as well, and the streamer character who’s sort of her boyfriend. What inspired those dynamics between those characters in the story?
Adam Finberg: Well, the brother — part of the story is about family, and I had to figure out when I was developing Claire’s character. I didn’t feel like an only child made sense. As a storyteller, I mean, you need to have characters. So, I felt like having a sibling was kind of the best way to take one situation and have two different interpretations or ways of processing the event.
Considering there are a lot of themes about trauma, that sort of made sense to me as a writer.
And then Justin — you know, I needed a character that had a different view and motivations from Claire when it came to the search for the UFOs.
Why they were searching, what lengths he was willing to go to find them, and what they actually meant to him.
Just to have that conflict was really important for it to be a compelling story, I thought.
The Heat of Star People
PopHorror: And the heat is obviously another problem they face throughout the movie. That makes it also relevant to today’s world. What do you think the viewers are going to read into that — with the struggles with the heat and the environment?
Adam Finberg: You know, it is unfortunately becoming a fact of the world we live in — that things are getting hotter. And I think it just seemed to fit that an Arizona summer could potentially go really nuclear in terms of the heat. I mean, just because people aren’t talking about the warming trend every day, it’s absolutely something that is happening.
So I don’t know. It seemed to make sense for the film when I was writing it — that it would be taking place on an extremely unusually hot summer day for the next few days.
PopHorror: Well yeah, and we’re all sort of in this together. Even though I don’t live in Canada, I have to put up with literal forest fire smoke that’s coming in from Canada. And we get air quality warnings about breathing in the smoke and stuff like that. So, I think we’re going to see more and more movies about these sorts of environmental themes and climate themes.
Adam Finberg: Yeah, it’s tricky because I wanted that to be a part of the film. But obviously, you have to have a compelling movie about people. That was just an element I wanted to work in. And you know, our makeup team did a great job helping to keep them sprayed down, because we shot it April to May. So it was between the cold and the hot season in Arizona. We couldn’t do it in either. We had to have it right in the middle so that it was tolerable. But yeah — it looks hot.
PopHorror: Yeah, it does. Do you think this movie will inspire people to look into the Arizona lights more and things like that? Or do you think they’re going to be more interested in the characters of the story?
Adam Finberg: I think that — I mean, look, the characters to me are what is compelling about a good movie.
But I hope that what people maybe take away from a film like this is self-discovery. It’s about the idea of — there’s a lot of themes about belief and connectedness. It’s a theme of connecting with others, escaping isolation.
So those are kind of the big themes I’m hoping audiences will take away from it.
The Brother
PopHorror: Yes. And the brother character — he’s a very natural kind of humor that’s thrown into the movie, which I like. He doesn’t feel like he’s there just for comic relief, although he does provide a little bit of that.
Adam Finberg: It was true. Yeah, it was intentional to have some humor in the film in a way that felt like it wasn’t at the expense of characters. It’s a tricky line, because comedy is just a complex thing to do correctly.
The idea with his character — the funniness wasn’t supposed to be from making fun of his addiction or whatnot.
It was just that he, as a person, is just kind of humorous. He’s got this sort of dryness to him. And just the sibling conflict was funny.
PopHorror: I think we all know people like him who have struggled and were, in some ways, difficult to get along with because of that — but we still tolerate them because, well, they’re family or there’s a history there. So, I think that’s really one of the best aspects of this film to me.
Adam Finberg: Oh, thanks.
PopHorror: Is there anything specific you want to say about the movie [that we have not covered yet]?
Adam Finberg: Well, we’ll be in theaters in Phoenix and New York on July 25th, which is this Friday.
It’ll be in L.A. on August 8th in the theater. And then it’ll be nationwide on VOD on August 12th — it’ll be available to watch no matter where you are in the U.S.
