After a drunk-driving accident, a young woman with her jaw wired shut sets out for a fun night with her friends—but what begins as a night of parties and social chaos quickly spirals into something much darker.

Written and directed by Sabrina Greco, “Lockjaw” explores what it means to be trapped in a self-destructive mental loop, using an unusual physical limitation to create both a narrative obstacle and a performance challenge. With her jaw wired shut, protagonist Rayna is unable to communicate normally, yet rather than becoming quiet or withdrawn, she becomes increasingly loud, theatrical, and chaotic. The result is a darkly funny exploration of anger, shame, friendship, and the ways people can become trapped inside their own destructive patterns.

Greco says she made “Lockjaw” to experiment with placing a serious limitation on a lead character’s performance while still allowing that character to be “big and bold.” The film’s central conceit grew from the idea of countering expectations about how someone with such a handicap might behave. Instead of being silenced, Rayna becomes more expressive, forcing the people around her to react to—and sometimes reflect—the emotional spiral she’s experiencing.

The film was originally conceived as a short, but Greco ultimately expanded it into her first feature when she realized the characters needed more time to reach the places she wanted them to go. Shot entirely in Los Angeles over 11 days, “Lockjaw” was made with a small, close-knit crew and a largely DIY approach to production. The film’s locations included a friend’s apartment, a Hollywood bar, and an artists’ home that served as the primary location for much of the shoot.

At the center of the film is Blu Hunt, whom Greco had previously worked with on other projects. Hunt’s performance had to communicate Rayna’s thoughts and emotions largely without conventional speech, making facial expression, physicality, and gesture essential to the character. The film also features Nick Corirossi as Robert, a magician whose presence introduces another layer to the film’s exploration of truth, perception, and communication.

Greco was born in Yonkers, New York, and graduated from Boston University. She currently lives in Los Angeles and works as an editor, having edited multiple feature films and worked with companies including Funny or Die and Nickelodeon. She was named one of Filmmaker Magazine‘s “25 New Faces of Independent Film in 2025.” Greco makes films with the collective Video Expert while also acting in and producing various projects. Her short films “Anthony’s” (2023) and “Maggie” (2021) have screened at festivals and on streaming platforms. “Lockjaw” marks her feature-film debut.

The full cast includes Blu Hunt, Colin Burgess, Nick Corirossi, Ally Davis, Sally Sum, Lena Redford, Creston Brown, Alison Sieke, and Thomas Paeter.

In the following conversation, Greco discusses the inspiration behind “Lockjaw,” finding Blu Hunt for the lead role, creating the film’s custom dental prosthetic, using magic to explore truth and perception, working with a young ensemble cast, shooting the film in just 11 days, and collaborating with Wynne throughout production and editing.

“Lockjaw” will screen at the Music Box Theatre on Tuesday, September 1, at 7 PM. Cinema Femme is a media partner for the event, and Sabrina Greco will be in attendance for a Q&A moderated by Cinema Femme Executive Director Rebecca Martin Fagerholm (me!). The screening will also feature Cinema Femme Short Film Festival award-winner Allison Torem’s short film, “Don’t Come Home Before Midnight,” which will precede the feature.

What was the inspiration for “Lockjaw.”

I think the idea originally was that I wanted to make a movie that felt like someone was trapped in this mental loop that they can’t get out of. Whenever it seems like they’re just about to get out, they end up right back in. So that was the first part of it.

But then I was also like, okay, maybe I want to make a movie where someone has to go out, and they have some physical thing that’s holding them back. The mouthpiece—I don’t exactly remember how I came to it—but once I figured that out, I realized it was perfect.

I also wanted to do something that had very big performances. Because Blu’s mouth—she’s inhibited in her speech rather than in her physicality—I thought it would be so much fun that she has to really overcompensate for everything she wants to say through her actions and her face.

There are even ways to be like, okay, we know she’s not telling the truth, even though we can’t understand what she’s saying. We know that just based on her expressions, which I thought was a really interesting challenge. Blu was really excited about that, too.

I originally wrote it as a short film that I didn’t end up making because I felt like the characters weren’t getting to the places that I wanted them to get to in such a short amount of time. So it very naturally just expanded into a feature, which was really exciting.

I had wanted to make a feature for a while, but I wasn’t exactly sure what to make one about, or I didn’t feel like I knew how to get into writing one. But then I was able to use this short that I wrote as an outline, and it came out very quickly. So it was great.

I really loved the pacing. It reminded me of mumblecore films from the early aughts, where the story takes you on a journey and you’re never quite sure where it’s going. I also loved how everything evolved organically alongside the story. The pacing was really effective.

Thank you.

How did you find Blu Hunt for this main role?

Blu and I had been friends for a bit, and we’d actually worked on a couple of other projects together. They were actually her projects that I helped her on.

So when I wrote this script, I knew that I wanted someone who was—Blu’s fairly short, and I knew I wanted a very short actress. I also thought that Blu would do this role really well.

Eventually, at first, I was like, “Who should I get to do this?” I had posted a little bit of a casting call, and then I remembered Blu. I was like, “Oh, she would be perfect.”

So I reached out to her. She read the script, and she really liked it. Then it was a very easy collaboration because we’d already been used to each other and worked with each other.

And then the first prosthetic with the lockjaw—can you talk about that process, working with your team?

It was a really fun process because obviously it’s a very low-budget movie, but I think it’s cool that it has this one actually very, very well-done prosthetic in it.

It’s made by a guy named Gary Archer, who is one of the top prosthetic dentists in the world, which is amazing. He did “Mrs. Doubtfire,” “Austin Powers,” “Uncut Gems.” Most fake teeth you’ve seen in movies were probably done by him because there’s also not that many prosthetic dentists. So the ones that are out there are really reputable and great and have so much experience.

I reached out to him kind of on a whim because I knew I wanted to do the mouthpiece. In doing my research, I realized there wasn’t really going to be a micro-budget way to do it. It was too complicated.

So I emailed him and was like, “Hey, I’m working on this movie. How much would it cost to do something like this?” And I sent him a reference photo.

He was like, “Oh, actually, that’s not very hard for me to do.” He gave me a quote, and it was way less than I anticipated. So it felt like I could actually go out and make the movie.

As far as getting it made, we would go to his office, and it’s a custom-made dental prosthetic. So Blu had to get molds done. The way it works is that it’s like a mouth guard that you’re biting into, almost like if two Invisaligns were glued together. Then there’s wiring on top of it, so she can very easily open and close her mouth around it and take it out. It’s not super restrictive.

And then the magic—I want to talk about your actor who plays Robert, Nick Corirossi. I thought that was really fascinating, using magic as a way of playing with the truth. What was the reasoning for bringing the magical element into the story?

Well, I think the initial idea for it was almost more on a superficial level, like, “Oh, I think this would be a fun addition.” But then, as I actually started exploring it, I realized that having this character where everyone’s not saying how they feel, or trying to get someone else to say how they feel, or just not communicating properly—having a character that has this overarching worldview that is correct, who always knows exactly what is happening, was really, really useful.

I think when the audience watches the movie, they can very easily tell the way the characters are feeling and the things that they aren’t saying. So if it felt too much like that was the only thing going on, it might feel frustrating.

But the fact that there’s this really fun character that the audience can latch onto and be like, “Oh, Robert the magician, Robert the magician and I both understand what’s going on here,” I think that worked really well.

I love that, and I really feel like you captured that experience so well. I’m in my early 40s, but watching the film, I thought you really nailed what it feels like to be in your 20s—going from one party to the next and figuring things out along the way. What was it like collaborating with the other actors and working with an ensemble?

Oh, it was amazing. All the actors—that was my favorite part of making the movie. It was getting to work with the actors.

It was the first time that I worked with a cast this big, and everyone that was on the cast was like, this is what they want their career to be. They want to be actors. So everyone was taking it very seriously, and it was a lot of fun.

I involved them in the script a little bit before the shoot to make sure that the things they were interested in were still being reflected. I tried to write for their sense of humor so that they could improvise in certain spots where it felt organic.

But generally, they were amazing to work with and so much fun.

I also wanted to make sure that, because we’re doing this one-night movie and we had to do these night shoots, I was treating them well. Overnights are not always the most fun.

Usually, people were called at like 3 p.m., even though the sun didn’t go down until 5. Then I would do some work with them before we could even start shooting, so that once we started shooting, we could shoot really fast and wrap around 3 a.m. at the latest.

Some of them had to go to work in the morning.

Wow.

It was a lot of schedule balancing with them to make sure that they didn’t need to cancel any of their commitments because they couldn’t take time off. And I didn’t want to make them take time off if, obviously, they got paid for this, but it’s still not like a movie where it would be really helpful for them to be able to go to work in the morning.

And then I saw that it was a tight shoot—11 days, was that right?

11 days.

With this being such an independent, DIY production, what was that process like? I’d love to hear a little about the locations, particularly where you filmed the magic show and the house, as well as the crew that helped bring everything to life.

For sure. So the movie is shot entirely in L.A. The house is owned by Marnie Weber and Jim Shaw, who are two artists. And all of the clowns in the movie are actually Marnie’s artwork that she let us use, which is a lot of fun.

We shot at the house for eight of those days, which was really crucial in making the movie happen.

My producer, Abbie (Jones), is close family friends with them, so she was able to get us to shoot there. They let us shoot there for free for eight days, which was part of the only reason the movie was able to happen in the way that it did. So Abby was able to get that together and really just make the movie happen.

The magic show is at a bar in Hollywood. The dinner party at the beginning is at a friend’s apartment. And then anything that we shot on the street, we just shot and hoped that no one would stop us.

But everyone—it’s a very small team of people that I’ve been working with for many years, so we don’t have to do too much to already get in sync because we’ve been doing this for so long.

And we’re very mobile, so it made it possible to go out and shoot run-and-gun-style stuff and make sure we were getting all the little things we needed in such a short amount of time.

We used two cameras for a lot of it. Anytime that there’s a scene where people are sitting around talking, it’s two cameras. The magic show was two cameras because if I wanted them to improvise or do anything like that, I needed to make sure that I was covering at least them and then a reaction from them, so that things could cut together well and I wouldn’t feel like I was missing anything.

How was it working with your cinematographer, Neal Wynne. How was that collaboration, since he had to do a lot of things on the fly?

Well, that’s also a funny collaboration because we’re married, so it’s a collaboration in many, many different ways.

He is, along with us being married, part of this group of people that I’ve been making films with for about 10 years now, when we all met in college.

He’s a director and an editor, and he shoots whenever people ask him to because he’s very good at getting things done very quickly and to a good quality level while all that has happened.

But it was great working together. His idea was to do the two cameras—actually, he and my producer’s idea was the two cameras, and I was a little bit averse to it at first. But then, after we all sat down and thought about it, it really made a lot of sense. So that was something I was really grateful to both of them for pushing for.

And then Neil and I also co-edited the movie, which was a fun experience because we were both editors as our jobs.

The way that worked was I started the edit on my own. Then, at some point, when I felt like I wasn’t getting enough new ideas out of myself, I brought him in little by little.

Eventually, he was running the keys and I was giving him notes on the full movie. Then, once it got to a point where we were like, “Okay, the movie is really functioning now. There’s little things to do, but nothing super major,” I took it back and just did a lot of the tweaking and pushing the cut points here and there myself.

You’ve started screening the feature for different audiences, so I’m sure you’ve gotten some interesting reactions and questions. What has it been like interacting with audiences, and what do you hope people take away from the film?

It’s been great. I think different people relate to it in different ways, and I don’t want to totally, I guess, diagnose exactly what I want people to get out of it.

But I do want people to feel like there is something in Raina’s character that, even though she is acting crazy and bad in a lot of ways, they can feel that there’s a part of that that lives inside of them. And then this movie is hopefully cathartic for that little piece of them.

“Lockjaw” will screen at the Music Box Theatre on Tuesday, September 1, at 7 PM. Cinema Femme is a media partner for the event, and Sabrina Greco will be in attendance for a Q&A moderated by Cinema Femme Executive Director Rebecca Martin Fagerholm (me!). The screening will also feature Cinema Femme Short Film Festival award-winner Allison Torem’s short film, “Don’t Come Home Before Midnight,” which will precede the feature.