Exclusive Interview: Director Arie Posin and Writer Marc Klein Talk About Creating The In Between

Writer Marc Klein and director Arie Posin are at the helm of the must-see new film The In Between.

The supernatural love story centers on a teenage girl, Tessa (Joey King), who, after bouncing around in foster homes for most of her childhood, doesn’t believe she deserves her own love story. Everything changes after she has a chance encounter with Skylar (Kyle Allen), a senior from a neighboring town who’s a true romantic. As her heart begins to open, tragedy strikes when a car accident takes Skylar’s life, while Tessa survives. As Tessa searches for answers in the aftermath of the accident, she soon believes Skylar is attempting to reconnect with her from the afterworld. With the help of her best friend and a newfound belief that love never dies, Tessa attempts to contact Skylar one last time, in order to give their love story the epic ending it deserves.

Pop Culturalist was lucky enough to chat with Marc and Arie about bringing The In Between to life on the screen.

PC: Marc, you wrote the screenplay and novel at the same time. What are some of the freedoms and challenges that each medium provides you as a writer?
Marc: That’s a really interesting question. I didn’t think about that before I took on both things and then realized. [laughs] The thing that’s fascinating about writing a book is you have the ability to go inside the thoughts of the characters. That makes it very, very exciting as a screenwriter where you have to do the opposite; your entire job is figuring out “How do I externalize and transform what she’s feeling into some sort of behavior?” You’re really talking about apples and oranges, but the benefit of that was when I was going back and forth writing the book and the script at the same time, I had this really intense and deep understanding of what Tessa (Joey King’s character) was going through in every single scene; probably more so than I’ve ever experienced with a character before.

That provided a breadth and a three-dimensionality to Tessa’s character that I’d never felt before as a screenwriter. That was really, really exciting. It made the process more exciting because I felt like I could share this with other creators on the project if they wanted and whatever they wanted to take out of that. It’s like a bit of a secret little Bible that I could give to everyone about what it was about and the things that were going on in the character’s mind. That was really an exciting part of doing it. It was difficult, but exciting.

PC: Arie, the film features three distinct worlds: the before, the after, and the in-between. What was your approach to bringing that to life on the screen in such a grounded way?
Arie: The big concern for me was to make sure the audience is never confused. It’s really, in a way, like two movies combined. There’s a love story and a ghost story. Both of them play out completely and inform each other. It was important on every level to distinguish those two stories in ways that are subtle and ways that are not so subtle—without resorting to any gimmicks—to make sure that when you’re watching the movie, you know where in time you are, especially because we’re really tied, in a way, to the hip of Joey King’s character, Tessa.

There are only a couple of very small exceptions where we ever really enter a space without her. We never experience anything that happens in the story without her experiencing it; we’re really walking with her and the ground is unfolding under our feet. It was important to keep that feeling so that we’re never ahead of her. We’re never behind of her. We’re really experiencing this as she experiences it, even the structure itself, the two storylines, which are baked in right from the beginning.

For me, it was the brilliance of the script. You experience what grief feels like. And not just grief from death, but an end of a relationship—that feeling that you’re here in the present, but at the same time, part of you is in the memories of the past and trying to make sense of that. A lot of my work was in making sure those two storylines felt different but fed each other.

Make sure to follow Marc (Twitter/Instagram) and Arie (Twitter/Instagram). Watch The In Between on Paramount+ today!