Neglected stars Dylan Sprouse and Josh Duhamel spoke with ComingSoon editor-in-chief Tyler Treese about their new serial killer thriller movie. The duo discussed their on-screen chemistry, playing complex characters, and more. The film is out today in theaters from Inagural Entertainment.

“On his first official day of retirement, Detective Shaw (Josh Duhamel) is called back to the precinct when a blood-drenched teenager named AJ (Dylan Sprouse) surrenders with a chilling ultimatum: he has buried Shaw’s teenage son alive. Plunged into a living nightmare, Shaw is forced to revisit a trail of grisly homicides as the oxygen in his son’s remote grave runs out. In a pulse-pounding race against the clock, Shaw must navigate a precinct on the brink of mutiny and a suspect who thrives on psychological warfare, as his investigation unearths a devastating truth: Shaw wasn’t chosen at random,” says the official synopsis.

Tyler Treese: Dylan, I’m always curious about how you find the humanity in a role like this when you’re playing a serial killer. Obviously, we learned a lot about your character’s backstory later on. Was that kind of your “in” to finding the character, or how was it making him seem disturbed by the trauma he’s undergone, but in a way that still felt human?

Dylan Sprouse: I think that was the fun of the character for me, was reading the script and seeing how you can possibly get to a point of empathizing with a character like this, who is clearly doing these deplorable acts while also feeling justified through being driven back into a corner. And so for me, I’m happy with the performance that we ended up with, and I think that a lot of that I can give credit to Josh for, because you can only prepare so much before you get on set and you start working with your co-stars, right?

I think a lot of that’s feeling on set. A lot of that’s workshopping it with your fellow co-star, and Josh made that really easy. He’s been doing it forever, and he’s a professional in every sense. So for me, it made it really easy to get there. And I was having fun doing it as well, which I think, when you watch movies, at least I do, but I can see when actors are at play in what they’re doing versus when they’re really struggling through their performances. I felt like I was at play during this.

Josh Duhamel: That’s great. I love that.

Josh, there’s such an interesting dynamic between you and Dylan in these scenes because he is sort of toying with your character. He’s arrested because he wanted to be, and he has the information advantage. What did you find most intriguing about getting to play with that character dynamic, where the police are definitely on the opposite side than usual and they don’t have the edge?

Josh Duhamel: It’s an interesting way to look at it. To think that he was starting the next phase of his life and gets drawn back into this because of something he didn’t even realize he did years ago. It was part of the reason I love this idea. One of the things I love and hate about this job is that you’re sort of forced to confront some really difficult things, some dark things at times, and to see what he’d done. Not only to these other kids, but also what he’s done to my son and what could happen if I don’t find him. It’s something you don’t wanna think about as a parent, but it’s also something that makes you appreciate your kids that much more, I guess.

So, I think Dylan said it perfectly. We just had a lot of fun. I love his approach to this. I love the way he played this character. He’s not this snidely whiplash sort of bad guy. He’s a really interesting and complicated and playful, I think, is the perfect word for that. There was something really playful about what he did, which I didn’t expect him to do, which made it a lot of fun. We just had a lot of fun making this movie. We shot it in like 15 days. So the pace was always fast, which I think helped me keep it at a 10 the whole time.

I love the interrogation scenes. Those are really fun.

Dylan, my last question, we see the kills and flashbacks, and it’s not glamorized. There’s a real grittiness to it and a realism to it. I mean, they’re disturbing. You’re cutting off a woman’s ear. How is it filming those scenes? Because they’re obviously extreme, but they’re not played into the gore. They’re very realistic.

Dylan Sprouse: I would actually give full credit for the performances in that scene to my stunt double. They actually filmed those scenes before I had arrived because of a conflict of schedule. They filmed it because it was so stunt-heavy and action-heavy. So I’m giving full credit to him for those kinds of gritty realism moments, even though we talked about it, and we talked about the hallway scene in Oldboy, and we talked about some of these scenes that are just like [realistic].

One of my biggest pet peeves is in action scenes when you don’t see an actor or a stunt double pant or get tired. That’s one of my favorite things because anyone who’s hit a bag for five minutes knows how exhausting it is. To me, when you’re just amped up, and you’re in these scenes where you’re seeing people throw each other and beat the heck out of each other or try to kill each other, in some movies, you just go, “Wouldn’t you be exhausted after five minutes?” But we talked a little bit about that, and I’m glad you caught it.

Props to you for not taking credit for it and being honest.

Thanks to Dylan Sprouse and Josh Duhamel for taking the time to talk about Neglected.