Movie Spotlight: The Edge

Someone off camera asks the question first. For the record, how well did you know Darius? The Edge opens like a documentary that has already decided its subject is gone, then spends the next half hour arguing with itself about who he actually was. It starts on a 1970s disco floor, in a Soul Train world of sequins and community, and it ends somewhere much darker, with a man screaming that he is the music now.

Teddy Joseph wrote, directed, produced and scored the film, and the question he keeps circling is deceptively simple: what happens to a person who finally gets what he wanted, one hit too late? Darius Reddick plays Darius, a struggling dancer who starts taking a drug called The Edge to sharpen his talent and chase fame, and the title does double duty. It names the substance, and it names a state Joseph says an entire generation was already living in. “It’s about being pushed to the edge, stress, life, civil rights and oppression, everything a black person was facing in the 70s,” he said.

An oral history that doesn’t trust its own witnesses

The fake-documentary framing was there from the start, and so was the horror. Joseph never treated them as separate ingredients he had to blend. “I wanted the viewers to not know what happened, whether Darius was alive or dead, good or bad. I wanted them to start to ask themselves who is Darius,” he said. “The horror element was always planned, sort of like a Twilight Zone or Black Mirror episode.” That refusal to settle the question is the engine of the film. Every talking head who shows up to describe Darius is really describing themselves.

Playing a version of himself

Casting Darius Reddick as a character named Darius wasn’t a coincidence, and it wasn’t just a wink either. “Darius in real life is a lot like the character in the film, he comes from a small town and he’s been striving to grow as a content creator,” Joseph said. “He’s also a performer in real life and he’s a devoted father doing his best to provide for his daughter, so I took that and it helped shape the story character as well.” The line between the actor and the role got thin on purpose. It’s part of why the character’s hunger, the specific hunger of wanting the lights to stay on, plays as lived-in rather than written.

Love as a math problem

Lisa tells Darius he loves the music more than he loves her. He insists everything he’s doing is for her. Both of them are right, which is the point. “In Darius’ mind he’s doing everything he can through the music to provide for his girl. He believes in it so much, she feels like he should give up. But it’s his dream as well,” Joseph said. “Men are sometimes pushed just to provide and women may not care what they do or love just as long as the bills are paid. But Darius has his own dreams.” It’s a small domestic argument sitting underneath a much bigger one about ambition and who gets to have it.

The floor before the fall

The disco setting isn’t nostalgia dressing. Joseph picked the era because the dance floor did real work for the people on it. “People used dance as a way to free their minds from poverty and stress. When the disco opened, people forgot about life and just had fun. No social media, just groove, and drugs were heavy as well,” he said. He describes the film’s early stretch as the silence before the storm, a run of scenes built around music bringing people together before greed and impatience start pulling them apart. Sky Bison, Woody Deant and Marc Tirolia Jr. fill out that world around Reddick as Lisa, Wood and Shorty, and Joseph co-composed the score with Westhetech, calling the process of building grooves for specific scenes and getting the cast to actually dance to them in character one of the best parts of making the movie.

Wood wasn’t the villain

Wood is the one who hands Darius the drug and warns him in the same breath: once you open it, you can’t close it. It would be easy to write him off as the corrupting influence, but Joseph doesn’t see it that way. “It was a two way sword. Woody was actually rooting for Darius and thought Darius would heed his warning. It wasn’t until Lisa kept pressuring him that actually made Darius snap and take more of the drug thinking it would help,” he said. “So Woody wasn’t really the bad guy, he was trying to actually help.” A record deal arrives seconds after the film’s hardest moment, and Joseph wants that timing to sting. “I wanted the audience to feel the weight of what happened. Had Darius just waited one more day, it teaches us the importance of patience and not giving up, because victory can be right around the corner,” he said. “Also it’s a lesson for a woman who is putting pressure to also know how to handle things with more care.”

What to know before you press play

Joseph isn’t precious about what he made. Asked what he’d want a first-time viewer to know, he kept it loose. “Get ready for a ride on the edge, bring your dance shoes and a partner, and enjoy this love and tragedy set in the world of the 1970s,” he said.

Horror

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Streaming now on Relay.