In our conversation at Tribeca, Mia Vallet revealed how Recluse pushed her into some of the darkest emotional territory of her career, bringing depth and unsettling complexity to the film’s haunting mystery.
At the 2026 Tribeca Film Festival, writer and director Henry Chaisson is looking to give audiences chills and spooks with the Gothic mystery-horror film Recluse. Chaisson is best known for writing the screenplay for Scott Cooper’s horror film Antlers (2021). Now, Chaisson made waves with his feature directorial debut, Recluse, which recently had its world premiere as part of the festival’s Escape From Tribeca lineup. One of the standout performances comes from Mia Vallet, who stars as Emily, a nurse.
Recluse centers on isolated audio engineer Joan Wyatt (Sasha Frolova), who returns to her childhood home after her father, renowned painter Lawrence Wyatt (Xander Berkeley), suffers a near-fatal accident. As Joan explores the estate and revisits the place that left her with severe trauma, she uncovers family secrets and begins to question whether the horrors surrounding her are supernatural in nature or manifestations of her own troubled mind.
In this exclusive interview, Vallet discusses her collaborative relationship with Chaisson and the trust they developed while making the film. She also shares insights into building Emily’s character and the horror films that inspired Recluse.
Kristin Ciliberto (KC): It was so great to check out this film because I’m a huge horror movie nerd, so this was right up my alley. I have to ask right away: do you believe in ghosts? Because this is a haunted house, a ghost story, and a psychological story.
Mia Vallet (MV): I have to be honest with you. I’m a pretty strong materialist in my general outlook on life. I’m not that keyed into the supernatural. I leave open the possibility that there are ghosts and spirits, but I haven’t really experienced them in my personal life. Maybe that’s because I have some skepticism about them; they don’t talk to me or something. So, I certainly leave open the possibility of being wrong, and I hope I have an experience that really shakes me out of that. But my sort of intuitive perspective on life is kind of on a more materialized side of things, I would say.
This character definitely taps into some really dark places.
KC: I really enjoyed Henry’s direction for this film. I know this is his feature film, directorial feature film debut. I think he did a really strong job directing this. What was it like working with him and getting to work on this project?
MV: It was fantastic. Henry and I made two shorts together before we made this film. We sort of had a pretty strong rapport going into it, and a language around how we like to work. He sort of, I think, understands my working style as an actor, and I have sort of a strong understanding of his perspective as a director. That kind of definitely gave us a good foundation to jump in and not have to feel each other out. I got the script pretty early. I think we shot in October, so we had time to have pretty substantial conversations about the role. He sent me a bunch of films to watch, and to the whole cast as well, that were tonal inspirations for the character or the film. We had some pretty substantial conversations about it. Then shooting it, I mean, it was so fun because we all lived in that house, which is just this insane Gilded Age mansion built like a robber baron or something crazy. We were all living together in this mansion while we were shooting, which was really fun.
KC: What were some of the films that you had to watch for inspiration?
MV: I watched Relic (2020), and we watched Let’s Scare Jessica to Death (1971), which was a big one for him. There was a sort of relationship between the characters. Some recent movies, this was one that I brought to the table, but Pearl (2022), for us, was sort of an emotional complexity of that character, which was something that we were looking at. I think those were the touchstone ones.
KC: Well, I love the twists and turns the story takes. I really enjoyed getting to see your character, Emily. What was the biggest challenge that you faced as an actor while working on this project?
MV: I think, I don’t know if I would call it a challenge, but one thing that I spent a lot of time thinking about and trying to figure out was sort of where I wanted this character to land in her day-to-day life. What is she like when she’s just at work, and who is she when we first meet her, because she’s a character that has a lot of complexity and depth to her. It just felt like there were a lot of possibilities for what kind of person she could be. Henry and I, it was great because I had the script for a long time, and we were able to try a bunch of different things about who this person is. When we meet them, I have just spent a lot of time exploring different shades for how I could see the character. I think that’s great when you can do that because, ideally, then those layers can show up in the performance in different ways. That’s what I hoped would happen, but it doesn’t always happen when you are shooting something right away and have to make a choice. It was a challenge, but also creatively fulfilling. Working on this project, we did have some time to kind of play with different sides of the character.
KC: I know you’re working on a lot of upcoming indie projects. What makes Recluse stand out from all the other projects that you’ve worked on?
MV: I love all the projects in different ways. I think Recluse is the one that’s the most kind of straight genre, straight horror. Because of that, it goes to certain levels of emotional intensity and, I guess, heightened states that you find in horror movies that maybe something more in the vein of realism or naturalism wouldn’t do quite in the same way. I mean, all of the projects that I’ve been working on, I’ve really enjoyed in different ways. I think this character definitely taps into some really dark places, especially in terms of what she experiences throughout the film. That was an interesting part of working on this project.
KC: Well, trauma was one of the big things I think the film does a really good job of exploring. What do you hope audiences take away after watching your performance and the film?
MV: I hope that the film, like some of the best horror movies, can hit people on several different levels, that it’s an exciting watch, and freaky, creepy, and scary while you’re watching it. Then I think that the story has some, like you said, kind of very relevant themes to things people might experience in their life, the sickness of a parent that maybe you had a complicated relationship with. What does it mean to be taking care of an ailing parent who hasn’t always been there for you in the way that you wanted? There are a lot of things like that where the characters are going through things that, even though it’s a horror movie and it goes to kind of heightened places, the things that the characters are dealing with, I hope people will find, you know, resonate with them in some way or are disturbing on a different level.
KC: There’s a lot of creepy imagery here, but I also really liked the artwork. I’m not sure if you’ll be able to speak more about it, but Joan’s father is an artist, and I was wondering if he worked on the artwork for this film?
MV: A really cool part of the film is that they actually sourced a lot of that art from local artists. I wish I had their names off the top of my head, but I don’t. There was a great article about it that discusses some of the local artists whose work they sourced for the film. It’s maybe like four or five of them. Then Xander Berkeley, who plays Joan’s father, is a fantastic actor, and he is also an amazing artist, and some of his work and paintings appear in the film. He painted some portraits of me and other characters. It was really cool because he was sending us iterations of the paintings he was working on after we wrapped the film. He would iterate a sketch of one of us and send us all these different versions, and they often got progressively darker and more disturbing.
KC: I love that! He got to have his own artwork in the film, and you got a lot of cool, amazing art from local artists, helping you guys create something that was definitely a spooky watch. As we close, I have to ask: what does it mean to you to have Recluse shown at Tribeca?
MV: It’s really exciting, I’m so excited! I live in New York. You know, I go to Tribeca every year, and I’ve seen some great films there. All my friends are in the city, and they can come, and it’s very fun to show a movie that you’re in at a festival that’s in your hometown and is something that you’ve kind of gone to almost as a ritual every year to be part of. It is just incredibly exciting!
Our team is on site for the 25th Tribeca Film Festival, from June 3 to 14, 2026.
