Encounter: Riz Ahmed, Octavia Spencer, and Michael Pearce on their Original Science-Fiction Thriller

With Encounter now streaming on Prime Video, I recently spoke with Riz Ahmed, Octavia Spencer, and director Michael Pearce about making the science-fiction drama. If you’ve ever read Collider, you know I always write about the plot of a movie in every intro to an interview. However, with Encounter, it’s one of those films where you really want to know as little as possible before pushing play. But since I know the majority of you need to know something…the film is about a decorated Marine (Ahmed) who tries to save his two young sons from an inhuman threat. Encounter was written by Pearce and Joe Barton and also stars Rory Cochrane, Lucian-River Chauhan and Aditya Geddada. During the spoiler-free interview, Ahmed, Spencer, and Pearce talk about why they wanted to tell this story, how Ahmed and Spencer prepared for their roles, how Pearce pulled off the opening shot with the asteroid coming at Earth on a limited budget, the difficulty of talking about the film without giving everything away, the editing