The book was later adapted into a Netflix Film of the same name in 2021. You can check out the Novelpro Junkie interview with Director Santiago Menghini by clicking the link. Meanwhile get to know more about the author, Adam Nevill, as he expressed his thoughts about the anniversary of his 2014 terrifying novel as well as its genesis.
1. In one word, how would you sum up your journey writing and releasing "No One Gets Out Alive" to the world 10 yrs ago?
Morbid.
2. Were there other titles you came up with before "No One Gets Out Alive" If so, what were they?
Yes, the original working title was 'You're Next'.
But, during my writing of the first draft, I popped out to the local shops to pick something up and noticed a promotional advertisement for a horror film called 'You're Next', on the glass of a public phone box. My title died in a heartbeat and had to be changed. Pretty sure I'd thought of No One Gets Out Alive by the end of the same day.
I expected my publisher to challenge the title but they liked it. The novel needed to sound like a horror film title.
3. What was your writing schedule when you wrote the novel?
I wrote most days in the dining room of a house that we rented as a temporary measure, while planning our next move to where we now live. We moved out of London to a house in north Birmingham and the location gave me the setting for the story. Birmingham is my home town but I'd never really written about it. This was my chance. My wife and I moved there, because her parents lived nearby and my family was not far away either; we wanted them all to meet our infant daughter before we disappeared to the coast.
So, I did a lot of research as I went along, and my reading covered some really awful true crime stories about the sadistic enslavement and murder of women. Hence the morbidity. This is the only book that provoked my wife to question my state of mind; as I researched and wrote the story, I was obsessing about the most awful human beings, and experiences, in order to create credible characters and situations. It was a tough line to walk – I couldn't allow the story to be too sensational, nor could it be titillating in any way at all. Weirdly, it made me conscious of a "responsibility" as a writer.
So, I worked on the book for a year, and rewrote it numerous times. I cut out an entire storyline about Amber's housekeeper - that ran over 20K words alone. The original first draft was enormous. The story took hold of me and dragged me behind itself. It could easily have hit one thousand pages.
4. Congratulations on the 10th-Year Anniversary of the novel “No One Gets Out Alive”, could you tell us how you found out that your book will be adapted into a film?
Thank you! On the set of The Ritual, I cracked a joke to the Head of Film at Imaginarium, and said: you guys should adapt all of my books into films. He smiled and said: we need to have a conversation about that. Imaginarium then took out an option on NOGOA, and the screenplay was developed by Jon Crocker; originally, the film was set in Birmingham. It changed to the US during development. Netflix funded the film in 2018 and we were all set to go by March 2020.
Then the pandemic dropped that very month and I assumed that we were canned. The US pandemic restrictions also dropped the day the team began shooting exteriors in Cleveland. But, granted an exemption, they managed to finish shooting that section of the production.
As with The Ritual, my agent sent me a message to say: the first day of principal photography has begun. For a writer, little comes close to that kind of news. You feel giddy with elation and disbelief.
5. Which one of your stories would you like to see made into a TV series or film?
Last Days for TV. Cunning Folk for the next film.
6. When writing "No One Gets Out Alive", do you like to map out your fiction plots ahead of time or just let it flow?
Until Cunning Folk, that was written in 2020, my approach to writing novels had become instinctive. I would have some ideas and I'd read around the relevant subjects, which always prompted lots of new ideas and set-pieces (enough for a series of books - huge treatments that were unrealisable). I'd then write a few scenes and pretty quickly the entire story would come to me through the very act of writing the early scenes.
But, Cunning Folk, The Vessel and All the Fiends of Hell, were approached differently. I first envisioned these stories as films, did research and wrote outlines, treatments and then screenplays initially. I later adapted my early screenplay drafts into these novels. So for these three stories, I had everything in place, and thought-through, before I wrote a sentence of prose. A tortuous approach but it made the stories tighter.
For my current work in progress, I have taken a hybrid approach, between these two techniques. You see, I am still experimenting and learning, twenty years into being a published horror novelist, and thirty years since I began writing seriously. I think this perpetual flux, and awareness of how many ways there are to write a story, has resulted in all of my books being different, and yet recognisable as mine. A best practice runs through all of the books, but I'm still excited by the possibilities in fiction.
I dislike how commoditised style has become in commercial fiction.
7. What's the best advice you have ever received about writing?
To learn how to rewrite. Mainly to remove incoherence. I used to write so freely and my early work was schizophrenic, lacking in discipline and technique. Writing was such a rush but if I ever look at that work now, I am filled with self-loathing. I am ashamed. Don't stop rewriting until you are depicting what you intended to depict. Don't kid yourself.
8. What was your favorite scene from "No One Gets Out Alive" when you wrote the book? And what was your favorite part from the film adaptation?
I think the scene when Stephanie is finally imprisoned inside the basement flat, with Old Black Mag, is my favourite scene in the novel - everything built to that critical moment. Imagining that scene transported me and left me a bit shaken. I was either delusional, or I was onto something affecting. And I didn't know which it was until people read the book. This scene has really chimed with a lot of readers too. It might sound odd, but the best scenes I write, give me a sense of causing permanent damage to myself. Of course, I never have done, but I sense that I go somewhere imaginatively from which I will return changed.
In the film, I think the revelation of the god is terrific.
9. From the novel "No One Gets Out Alive", could you please leaf through the pages and point at a random place. What is the full sentence? And what is the page number of this random sentence?
Now, that was fun. I opened the St Martins edition on page 385 and I read:
"The door opened slightly, but no one came through. Not for a while anyway. Voices entered instead."
10. Last question, what's your motto in life?
I don't have one. Should I? I do have principals, though. I endeavour to do no harm. I also strive to limit my own misery. I've never shirked responsibility, and now that I have dependents, that tendency has really found the right place to thrive. The older I get too, the more damn grateful I am.