An in-depth conversation with director and co-writer JAMES CULLEN BRESSACK discussing his latest film, THE WORKOUT.
SYNOPSIS: A found footage action-revenge film that follows Army Ranger Wyatt Park as he documents his brutal quest for vengeance after a mob attack kills his pregnant wife during a fitness video shoot. With a narrative device explaining the constant camera use (Wyatt’s memory loss and documenting for his surviving daughter), THE WORKOUT features immersive first-person combat, blending intense fighting with a tale of grief, revenge, and a ticking clock from a brain injury, making it an unconventional, action-packed thriller.
Directed by JAMES CULLEN BRESSACK and co-written by Bressack and David Josh Lawrence, THE WORKOUT stars Peter Jae as “Wyatt” and General Hospital‘s Josh Kelly as his best friend “Levi.”
After the Hollywood strikes finally ended, James Cullen Bressack found himself in unfamiliar territory: idle. For the first time since launching his career, he hadn’t rolled cameras on a new project before his birthday. Restless and creatively charged, Bressack did something characteristically impulsive—he posted on Instagram that he was shooting a movie the following week and asked who wanted in. “The movie came together, as crazy as it sounds,” he says. That spontaneous call to action became THE WORKOUT, a formally daring found-footage action film co-written with David Josh Lawrence.
From the outset, Bressack knew he didn’t want to make something conventional. The concept crystallized around a simple but unconventional idea: “I wanted to make a video diary of someone unraveling while losing their mind—but as an action movie. I don’t think I’d ever seen a found footage action film before.” That combination—psychological collapse filtered through surveillance cameras, body cams, and phones—became the backbone of the film’s visual and narrative identity.
Casting followed the same instinct-driven logic. Peter Jae was cast as Wyatt before the script was fully finished; the role was written specifically for him after Bressack’s previous collaboration with the actor on Darkness of Man. “We wrote it for Peter… and I really wanted Peter to play this role, and I thought he could really handle it,” Bressack explains. For Levi, the decision was rooted in authenticity. Josh Kelly, a real-life Army Ranger with four tours of duty, brought an inherent credibility to the role. “Josh Kelly was so good in the movie—very layered, very human. And because he really was an Army Ranger, it was a no-brainer to build Levi around that.”
Although Jae and Kelly had never met before being cast, Bressack made sure their on-screen bond felt earned. He sent them out to dinners and drinks ahead of production, encouraging a genuine camaraderie that would translate into the film’s brothers-in-arms dynamic. The supporting cast includes Ashlee Evans Smith as Tank—her first acting role after a career as a UFC fighter. “Ashlee was the big roll of the dice,” Bressack admits. “But she took it so seriously, and it really paid off.”
Visually, THE WORKOUT is governed by a strict but unconventional grammar developed with cinematographer Bryan Koss and editor R.J. Cooper. Every camera in the film is motivated within the story—surveillance feeds, chest cams, room cameras, phones—and each is treated as its own “entity.” Some feeds are color, others black and white, some crisp and others degraded. In many scenes, the production ran eight cameras simultaneously. “Any given scene, we had like eight cameras going at the same time,” Bressack says.
Rather than staging scenes like a traditional film, Bressack adopted a guiding rule: do the opposite. “Everywhere Brian and I would normally put the camera, we deliberately did the opposite—and it actually made the film feel bigger, more immersive, more grand.” That choice led to wide, high, and off-angle perspectives that feel less like cinema and more like an omnipresent security system. The result surprised him. “The more I showed how wide and large and grandiose the locations were, the more the movie opened up. That’s something I’m going to carry into future films.”
Post-production was where that ambition truly collided with logistics. Cooper was tasked with shaping eight streams of footage per scene into something coherent and readable. Bressack doesn’t downplay the challenge. “RJ is the only person I know who I can hand eight cameras’ worth of footage for every scene and he can actually make sense of it. He’s the unsung hero of this film.” The edit balances dense multi-cam grids—sometimes four to six feeds on screen at once—with pacing that gives the audience time to process each angle.
The VHS-style static and image degradation were also carefully designed in post, increasing as the violence escalates and mirroring the protagonist’s psychological unraveling. “We really worked heavily on that,” Bressack explains. “We wanted every camera to feel like a different entity—different feeds, different textures—so nothing ever looks equally crisp.”
Sound became the film’s other crucial storytelling engine. Longtime collaborator Brian Berger handled sound design and mixing, while composer Simone Cilio contributed a synth-forward, Zimmer-esque score. While the edit wrestled with scale and structure, the sound team focused on immersion and clarity. “We really wanted the sound to create a visceral experience that put people in the moment,” Bressack says. Despite the chaos of gunfire, explosions, and hand-to-hand combat, the mix never sacrifices intelligibility. “We never lose dialogue.”
Shooting the action itself was a careful dance between choreography and coverage. Working with stunt coordinator Luke LaFontaine, the team often staged sequences multiple times—sometimes reshooting entire sections just to serve a specific POV, like Levi’s chest cam. Tight interiors, such as Levi’s apartment, posed different challenges than expansive locations like the Antonucci mansion, all while the film pushed into increasingly graphic and varied violence.
Looking back, THE WORKOUT reshaped how Bressack sees his own instincts as a filmmaker. By rejecting conventional camera placement, he discovered the power of scale and space in creating immersion—lessons he plans to carry forward regardless of genre.
And if THE WORKOUT finds its audience, Bressack hints there may be more to come. “If the movie does well enough,” he says, “we’ve talked about a prequel—Pre-Workout—their first mission together in the army.”
TAKE A LISTEN. . .
by debbie elias, exclusive interview 11/13/2025
THE WORKOUT is currently available on Prime Video and Blu-ray.
