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Director Steven Peros sent along some info and a bunch of exclusive photos (see them below), from THE UNDYING, his new supernatural film from Roscommon Pictures. Peros, best known for scripting Peter Bogdanovich’s Kirsten Dunst-starrer THE CAT’S MEOW from his own play, also wrote UNDYING with producer David M. Flynn.

Robin Weigert (first photo, with Paul David Story), who nabbed an Emmy nomination for playing Calamity Jane in HBO’s acclaimed series DEADWOOD, stars as Dr. Barbara Houghton, who moves into a rural Pennsylvania farmhouse as she starts a job at a hospital. Still reeling from the death of her fiancé, she becomes intrigued by the story of Elijah, a Civil War soldier whose ghost supposedly haunts her new home. When Jason (Anthony Carrigan, second photo), a stabbing victim she has treated, is taken off life support, she steals his body and takes it to the farmhouse, where it becomes the vessel for Elijah to live again. A romance develops between them—but it gets complicated when the spirit of Jason, a violent felon in his previous life, begins reasserting his control over his own body. The cast also includes veteran actor Jay O. Sanders (third photo with Weigert), THE CAVERN’s Sybil Temtchine and DEEP RISING’s Wes Studi (fourth photo).



“THE UNDYING is a ghost story whose influences can be found in such diverse sources as Robert Wise’s THE HAUNTING, Anthony Minghella’s TRULY MADLY DEEPLY and Peter Medak’s THE CHANGELING,” Peros tells Fango. “All these have in common a grounding in reality, which makes the supernatural component that much more unsettling, because we believe it. Though I love more gonzo/stylized horror, à la Mario Bava and Dario Argento, this film needed to be more settled in the normalcy of the everyday to better serve its underlying theme of the acceptance of death.” The movie is thus performance-driven, and Peros particularly praises Carrigan, who will be seen as one of the leads in Jerry Bruckheimer’s ABC series THE FORGOTTEN this fall. “Anthony was a kid with no credits who walked into our casting session, blew me away and got the lead over actors with much heavier résumés,” Peros says. “He handled the character’s Jekyll/Hyde elements with both complete freshness and chilling gravity.”



Flynn, whose initial UNDYING draft was a finalist for the prestigious Nicholl Fellowship, and Peros first attempted to get the project off the ground in the mid-2000s, but several potential production deals ultimately fell through. Ultimately, the duo secured private equity funding and shot the movie in early 2008 on locations in New Jersey. Unlike many recent spook stories, this one doesn’t depend on digital spirits. “Like the films I mentioned, this one has relatively few effects shots,” Peros notes. “In my opinion, CGI ghosts are generally not scary. The more you show, the less frightening it is. Just compare the two versions of THE HAUNTING for a master class in what is—and isn’t—scary. We did do some post effects, but a lot was in-camera, all guided by our terrific effects supervisor, David Fogg,” whose credits include MIRRORS and TV’s GHOST WHISPERER. We’ll keep you updated as THE UNDYING heads toward distribution.

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