Treating Money as a Ghost and Directing Matt Damon & Ben Affleck

The Rip very much embodies what a Joe Carnahan film means. From the director of Narc, The Grey, and Copshop (now on Netflix), the action thriller delivers what Carnahan does best. Not only practical action with punch, but a closeness among good guys and bad guys that may or may not get beaten to a pulp by said punches.

Everyone is at risk in a Carnahan film, including Lieutenant Dane Dumars (Matt Damon) and JD Byrne (Ben Affleck) in The Rip. Two members of a financially struggling Miami police force discover millions of stashed cash in a house that, to Carnahan, screams more horror than thriller. In the writer-director’s own words, the money is the ghost threatening to tear apart the crew in the film.

Recently, Carnahan spoke with What’s On Netflix about crafting some of the film’s robust action set pieces and collaborating with two Academy Award–winning writers as his stars.

After all your prep work on the outline, you wrote The Rip in five weeks, right? Were all the twists and turns planned before writing page one or did you find any along the way? 

Listen, it’s a bit misleading to say I wrote the script for five weeks. But [screenwriter] Mike McGale and I spent a couple of months dialing in the specificity and the tone so that when you went to the actual dialogue, we knew what all those little beats were. We knew which bell was here, which whistle was there, and how they were going to be activated. So, it’s a little glib of us, “Oh, we just cranked it out in five weeks.” There was a lot of work that went into allowing me to go off and write and expedite that process. 

What were you aiming for when you started the script?

I was always gunning for an intimate, quiet moment, because in the grandiosity of $20 million in a stash house, it’s a bit sensationalized right from the jump. I keep mentioning the scene with Catalina [Moreno] where she talks about that little bit of money [in her hands], how it would help her and what it would do for her. Those were great scenes to do, in humanizing these characters and grounding them. You’re that much more concerned about their wellbeing. 

And so, it was twofold. You got your cake and ate it too, in that, okay, now you’re scared for her. You don’t want anything to happen to her. She has kids. Just that line, “This would make my life so much easier to live.” That’s a hell of a thing, man. And that’s a reality, dude, that a lot of people are dealing with. Those were these little bon mots that I didn’t anticipate that showed up and I enjoyed. 

THE RIP. Sasha Calle as Desi in The Rip. Cr. Claire Folger/Netflix © 2025.

You have those grounded moments, as well as the heightened, film noir touches with all the shadows, fog, and darkness of night in Miami. How’d you and your cinematographer want to make the world of The Rip not only grounded but cinematic Juanmi [Azpiroz]? 

Noir and horror are kind of kissing cousins. They’re very similar at times. It is a haunted house movie, and the thing haunting it is the money. The ghost is the money. It’s also the final boss, the ultimate bad guy. The villain is the money. 

Juan and I spent a lot of time talking about color schemes and how the camera was going to move and what it was going to function as. You’ll never catch us going like, “All right, let’s just roll two cameras and we’re going to do this thing.” I think that’s a bullshit way to make a movie. I like a specificity. I think you’re writing with one pen. 

There’s this scene where Ben Affleck is calling Kyle Chandler’s character and he’s moving in and out of focus. He moves through the focal plane and then comes right back into focus – and that’s designed. The character doesn’t know what the hell’s going on, so it’s murky and lacks focus. When you start to do these types of things and tell that type of story, you have to stick to it because then it becomes chicken shit to do it some other way. 

I’m really lucky, really fortunate to have somebody like Juanmi in my corner because I consider him one of the most talented people I know. He’ll come and he’ll live with me for a couple weeks in prep so we can have moments at night. We can watch a movie and discuss it. What do you think? Do you like this? Do you like that? 

Horror is definitely present in The Rip. There’s the scene outside when Detective Mike (Steven Yeun) witnesses all the lights in the neighborhood slowly turn on. How’d you want to create terror there? 

William Goldenberg (Zero Dark Thirty), Christopher Rouse (The Bourne Ultimatum), – who are legendary editors – one of those guys gave us a note about it. We had originally truncated that scene. Steve sees the light go on, you go back to a couple other scenes and then Ben shows up and they decide to put it back to back. He’s there. And then there’s the jump scare of what’s going on and it’s Ben, these lights, they had just gone on. It was a really great suggestion. 

Listen, there’s the movie you write, the movie you shoot and the movie you edit. It’s rare that oftentimes they’re diametrically opposed to one another at some point because you realize, okay, this worked on the page, this seemed to work on the day. It no longer works in the edit. You just have to be judicious about it and brutal at times and kill your babies. 

To keep the suspense going? 

The thing is, Jack, once you hook in from the minute that Matt Damon walks out and out of focus and he’s looking at the guys gathering around the money, you know something is afoot, so now you have to service that. You have to water that thing regularly or risk losing it. Once the paranoia, once the tension, the suspense begins, now you’re on a path. That’s a moving target. You learn these things as you’re going, okay, got it. 

So the editing is also a function of his pace, but it’s also like, are we checking these boxes? Are we setting these things up and paying them off? We went out of our way to make sure we were doing that. Not giving the audience too much information, but also not depriving them when necessary. 

THE RIP. (L to R) Scott Adkins as FBI Agent Del Byrne, Ben Affleck as Detective Sergeant J.D. Byrne, Catalina Sandino Moreno as Detective ‘Lolo’ Salazar and Teyana Taylor as Detective Numa Baptiste and Daisuke Tsuji as FBI Agent Logan Casiano in The Rip. Cr. Claire Folger/Netflix © 2025.

The story unfolds naturally. What were some of the boxes you wanted to hit in the third act rig sequence? You got four great actors, a lot of story to unfold, and suspense to work with. 

Brother, you’re talking about a 20-minute scene with four guys. It’s like black box theater. You’re moving it out of the shadows. It’s scary. You’re not sure what’s going to happen. You’re inside, so you don’t know if they’re going to be hit from outside. You don’t know what the hell is going on. 

You’re very much in a strange place with men you believe, characters you believe to be adversarial towards one another. You see them in the color schemes. In the movie, red is Jackie’s color. Green is the money. Steve Yeun is always lit with this blue light., so it’s always on his face – it’s the nobility of the cop. 

And green?

The green gets more intense. It becomes almost like Emerald City, like Oz. That money’s not real, man. I think you’re so in it, you don’t realize, wow, it’s really green. That’s the fantasy of what you think that money can do for you. 

But that sequence, bro, in the back of that rig, that’s the lynchpin scene because you don’t even realize the house of cards has been constructed until it comes down. It’s almost a simultaneous building and knocking down everything. “Oh, wait a minute. I didn’t realize, oh, shit.” It was the most key scene in the film, and it was the hardest thing to shoot. 

Then once you build that house of cards up and then knock them down, you and your crew have to shoot an action sequence between four guys in a very confined space. How’d you pull that off? 

We built the rig on stage. The dimensions are obviously much bigger than normal. You don’t notice when Kyle’s shooting back, he’s being pursued, that thing is so narrow. You know what I mean? But it doesn’t matter at that point, because you’re into it.

A lot of safety work. I wanted to shoot full load blanks when we could. I just think that CG muzzle flash is still not caught up with the real thing. I thought the ignition and the combustion of a gun, it also lights the actor – and you can’t fake that. Again, you could digitally do whatever you want, but my eye is always drawn to that’s not real. We tried to keep it safe, but practical and old school. 

Even when your action is very claustrophobic, there’s clarity in the chaos. How do you do that? Where is the sweet spot for you in terms of blocking and framing? 

I go into scenes with a thesis statement. What are we trying to say beyond the obvious? These guys are having a conversation. So when Matt and Ben go into that little side room, that little den, Matt is on sticks. He’s completely stable and Ben is handheld because he’s uncertain, on shakier ground. 

That doesn’t sound like some great mother of invention. But to me, that makes perfect sense because I’m now mirroring the characters. Again, like I mentioned when he’s walking in and out of focus, it’s the visual language you’re trying to convey in a straightforward way that comments on what’s happening, but doesn’t get in the way. It doesn’t become something that pulls you out of the movie. 

It’s just some of its luck, some of its planning, some of its stardust. Who knows? But I believe that, going back to your saying, even if it’s chaotic, there’s clarity. When the gunfight starts in the garage, that’s shocking this kind of peroxism of violence. 

We had a Libra head, which is like a $250,000 stabilized head that’s one of the most fine, elegant pieces of camera gear you can have. It’s meant to be a rockstar. Of course, we destabilize it and we do this thing called seizure wheels. It’s to get the percussive nature of what it would be like to be in that garage and have the shit shaken out of you by that much sonic volume moving around. I like stuff like that, man. 

THE RIP. (L to R) Steven Yeun as Detective Mike Ro and Sasha Calle as Desi in The Rip. Cr. Claire Folger/Netflix © 2025.

You worked with Ben Affleck on Smokin’ Aces a few years before he started directing himself. Obviously, he was already an accomplished screenwriter, but how do you think directing has changed his approach to acting? 

Oh, Ben has always had that because he’s just a really bright guy. Even when he worked with us before, that guy was a hell of a filmmaker. He understood and had a gold statue by then. He knew the ins and outs of this business. 

What’s great about Ben now as a studio boss – and as the actor – is that he knows exactly what I need. He’s like, “Dude, whatever you need.” Because he’s been in those situations. It’s like, “I need the actor to do this. I need the actor to do that. This is how I need him to behave in this scene.” 

I know the stories of him and Casey on Gone Baby Gone, like, “Why would I walk into this room? Why would I do this? Or why would I do that? ” It’s like, “Because I fucking told you to walk from here to there today.” You don’t want that. I’ve dealt with that and it’s not pleasurable. It fractures the fragile nature of teamwork on a movie set when you don’t have the buy-in from everybody. 

I made a movie before The Rip that I think is quite good. I had one actor that was just a talented prick. What happened was I used that, him being kind of a separatist and him choosing to be exclusionary. It’s like, okay, I can work with this. If you’re going to give me lemons, I’m going to give you a lemon drop martini back. You have to be willing to overcome that stuff.

Jack, that’s my advice to young directors. Get to know actors, get to understand what they are and make them feel safe. I always tell actors, listen, it’s impossible for you to fuck up. It’s impossible. If it’s not working, it’s on me. That’s my job. It’s not your job. Once they feel that sense of security and safety, the sky’s the limit. 

THE RIP. (L to R) Steven Yeun as Detective Mike Ro, Matt Damon as Lieutenant Dane Dumars, Ben Affleck as Detective Sergeant J.D. Byrne and Kyle Chandler as DEA Agent Mateo ‘Matty’ Nix in The Rip. Cr. Claire Folger/Netflix © 2025.

On set, how do you build upon character and story with Ben Affleck and Matt Damon? What conversations are you having? What’s inspiring them? 

Matt and Ben both had an eagerness, the impetus for these roles, like, “Let us get in front of these guys in Miami, let me talk to these guys.” The cops that are in the movie, around the table playing dominoes are all real Miami, Narc cops or murder cops, murder police or what have you. 

They spent a lot of time with them and picked their brains. What I would do as well is on that first day we shot the FBI briefing, where everybody’s being brought in and interrogated, I’d send them out of the room when they were done with their bit. I did 30-minute running takes. I’d send them out of the room. They would go to this bullpen area that was all real cops and I had two cameras set up rolling and they would have to interact with the real cops in-character. 

What that did was it just had this grounding effect that they started to feel like they’re, “Oh, I understand this.” Again, the more time you spend with someone, camera rolling or not, especially if you’re a good actor, you’re going to pick up on the trait. I think that’s what happened and it worked. 

The Rip is now streaming on Netflix globally.