The Haunting in Connecticut is based on the true story of a family who moved into a house that used to be a mortuary and were haunted by the malevolent spirits that resided there. I recently had a chance to sit down with director Peter Cornwell to talk about his first feature-length film, his animation background and what it’s like trying to order a pizza in a post-apocalyptic world.

BD: The Haunting in Connecticut is your first-length film but it isn’t your first foray into the genre. Back in 2003, you made a stop-motion horror short called Ward 13. How did that experience guide you during Haunting’s shoot?

Cornwell: When you do a short film, you get a bunch of your buddies for one, two, three weekends and they all start dropping out. When you’re doing an animated film, as long as you’ve got the time, you can just keep going and do it yourself. I realized that if I built these miniature sets and characters, I could do this giant, action-packed blockbuster essentially by myself. I shot on an animation table set up in my bedroom. I moved my bed and flipped my mattress, setup all my miniatures and had an ancient 16MM camera and banged it off frame-by-frame. When I shot the feature part of it, it impressed enough that it got some funding from the Australian government to finish it and do some sound. Put some real music on it. My sound designer was Malcolm Fife and he did a great job working on Panic Room. He was an Academy Award nominee – he worked on Benjamin Button – and he volunteered to mix the film. So, after that, I got some contacts in America and got a manager. From there, I met with all these producers that thought, “You can do live-action, right?” It was shot like a live-action film; my influences were more live-action than animation. What’s great about animation is that you can’t just shoot, get coverage and decide what to use; you have to decide every shot and angle beforehand. You don’t spend a day animating a shot and not use it in the film. It forces the discipline of knowing and seeing what you want, which is an important skill for shooting a film. The film had no dialogue, so the storytelling was visual, in terms of shots and pictures. The thing with The Haunting in Connecticut is that it has a lot of scenes that are visual narrative. People walking through the house by themselves and stuff. It lets you pump up the story and have some creative influence.

BD: What was it that attracted you to Haunting?

Cornwell: It has a really good story. It’s a horror movie with a heart. It’s just a real ripping yarn.

BD: Had you seen the Discovery Channel special beforehand?

Cornwell: I had heard about it but hadn’t seen it. The writers had been working with Carmen [Snedeker] for a couple of years while writing the script. What’s great about making a movie about the supernatural is that it’s a different type of scariness. With a slasher film, you know there’s a guy around the corner with a knife and you’re wondering when he’s going to pop out. With a supernatural film, there’s something weird going on but you have no idea what it actually is. Anything can happen so it gives you the freedom to come up with something absolutely crazy. The rules aren’t clearly defined and that’s what makes it scary - the fear of the unknown. It gives you a lot of interesting ways to scare the audience. It’s a lot of fun.

BD: Besides for the trailer, the thing that has really stood out to me about the film’s marketing is the ectoplasm motion poster. I think, for a lot of people, their only exposure to that was in Ghostbusters. What was it like working with the idea and making it scary?

Cornwell: The writers, Adam Simon and Tim Metcalfe… They’re both great guys and they really know the genre. They showed me these photos from actual séances back in the 1920s and 30s, and there was this ectoplasm coming out of them. It was this meaty substance, not the stuff you remember from Ghostbusters. They were excreting this really bizarre substance.

BD: Are the photos they showed you the same ones in the film?

Cornwell: There are some snippets of them in the film. They appear briefly. But, yeah, that’s what we riffed off. I saw them and thought it was pretty disturbing.

BD: Did you have any input into creating the motion-poster?

Cornwell: Not really, though I think they’re great. What’s really unique about the film is that while there have been haunted house films before, ectoplasm isn’t used in them. Even though it’s something from the 1920s, no one has ever used it before. It’s people trying to reform in our world in the flesh. It’s been suggested that the photos are faked, but living in a world where that could be real is terrifying.

BD: Haunting harkens back to the style of old school horror films with heavy atmosphere. Which ones most influenced your film?

Cornwell: To me, Robert Wise’s The Haunting is the best haunted house film there is. What’s great about it is it comes from the closed door school of horror, as Stephen King puts it. You don’t see anything; it’s all in your mind. Not a lot of recent films do that. I guess in Blair Witch, you never see the witch and in Mothman Prophecies, you don’t see anything. It’s hard to do a film like that, where you don’t see anything. But certainly, it’s a great example of how to create a scare out of what you don’t see or don’t know. You’re mind is always changing. If you’re watching a slasher film, you know there’s a guy with a hockey mask and a machete around the corner. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it’s a different kind of dread.

BD: What was it like shooting scenes where there’s no visual representation of the threat on-screen vs. physical manifestations?

Cornwell: It’s all about how to fit it into the frame. That’s the fun part; using the language of film to tell the story. When you’re describing Evil Dead or Peter Jackson’s Brain Dead to people, you’re describing it in terms of the shots. When reading this script, I was thinking about how to tell it in shots and how it looked in my head. The other thing is presenting the story as a mystery. With some haunted house films, it’s like weird stuff happens and it turns out to be an Indian burial ground. With this film, weird stuff went on in the basement. So once you know there’s something weird in the basement, you still don’t know what it is and it keeps the intrigue going. I know people who didn’t find The Ring scary, but they kept watching because they wanted to know what was going on with the videotape. With some horror films, unless you’re under the spell, there’s no story. This film sort of has this insurance policy, where there’s a story and characters that you hopefully like and get involved with and try to unravel what’s been going on.

BD: Since the film is based on actual events, did you find yourself changing it up a bit because you found really cool stuff that would fit into the story?

Cornwell: With The Discovery Channel documentary, different people had different rights to story and we had to change the names in our film. What’s really cool is how much Carmen is really behind the movie. You should talk to her about it. (laughs)

BD: Did you feel pressured to stay true to the actual events?

Cornwell: Well, we weren’t shooting a documentary; first and foremost, it has to be a movie. What’s great is how Carmen really likes the film. She was actually crying and stuff, she didn’t want to see it a second time because it was too close to her experience. I think the heart of the film is true to life and we were both really happy with it. If people liked the movie, they can learn about the story online; there’s a lot of information on it out there.

BD: When you came onto the project, did you have anyone in mind for the roles?

Cornwell: Well, we got really good actors; I think that’s the key to this story. You want the real world to be as real as possible, so that the supernatural world seems as real as possible. We couldn’t have done better than Virginia [Madsen]. Not only is she a great actor, but she really is a mother and brings this motherly warmth and strength to the character. Kyle [Gallner], the lead kid, was great. We auditioned a whole lot of people and he’s a fantastic young actor. I think he’s going to go on to do a lot of things. Elias [Koteas] is just a great guy and a really great actor.

BD: Yeah, he’s been in tons of great stuff. He was in Zodiac, which I consider to be one of the best films of the decade, Apt Pupil, The Thin Red Line…

Cornwell: He was in Benjamin Button as well. He was the guy who built the clock that runs backwards.

BD: We can’t forget Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles!

Cornwell: (laughs) Yeah, everyone remembers him in that. He’s got like 8 films coming out. He’s like Robert De Niro in terms of quality. He’s a humble sort of guy, always trying to do a better job. He really works at his craft, trying to figure out different ways to do the take. Had he done Taxi Driver instead of Ninja Turtles, he’d be up there with De Niro. He’s just coming into his own; just look at all the films he has coming up.

BD: I know he has Shutter Island coming up, and that’s going to be a huge release.

Cornwell: He’s in this film called The 4th Kind. I actually got to see some of it, since it’s from the same studio that made Haunting, and it’s really quite intense.

BD: Is there anything you had to cut out of the film or scenes that you didn’t get a chance to shoot?

Cornwell: There are a few deleted scenes. They were cut mostly for pacing and structural reasons. Yeah, it would’ve been awesome to have more to shoot the film but I think we did a great job with the time that we had. With my animation background, we used almost everything we shot. With the more expensive films, a lot of the stuff ends up on the cutting room floor, but that wasn’t the case here.

BD: So, no three-hour director cut? (laughs)

Cornwell: (laughs) No, almost everything is on-screen.

BD: You did a XBOX Live Horror Meets Comedy short recently, called Post-Apocalyptic Pizza. How did you get involved in that? James Gunn gives you complete and total creative control over your short, right?

Cornwell: Yeah. It’s just a fun project, really. They don’t give us much money to make it; it’s just a bit of fun. I got a chance to work with my friends and spend a couple of days shooting something.

BD: Was it a good experience?

Cornwell: It was awesome. Just me and my friends; it was like a party, except that we had really intense, grueling days shooting action sequences.

BD: How many days did they give you to shoot it?

Cornwell: Two days, but we could’ve taken longer. We could’ve spent more time but we rented this location where they shot Iron Man. You know when Iron Man was in Afghanistan and he blows up the tank? We used that location. It was a wasteland, perfect for a post-apocalyptic future. Eric Gable, the genius actor that has four black belts in jujitsu, plays a post-apocalyptic pizza guy. After the apocalypse, what do people do for pizza? It’s pretty tough to get a pizza. He has to fight his way through the wasteland, and fight off thugs and mutants and get the pizzas to you.

BD: What are you working on next? Anything in the horror genre?

Cornwell: A number of things but I can’t say too much. Sure, I’d stay in the genre, but it depends what the film is. I have a lot of ideas for action stuff; I want my next project to be really action-packed. But, the main thing is the story, characters, structure and pacing.

BD: Would you consider working on another XBOX short?

Cornwell: If I have time between other stuff, I’d love to. I think Post-Apocalyptic Pizza could feasibly be a three-parter. Part Pizza Hut, part Mad Max, part ninja. (laughs)

THE HAUNTING IN CONNECTICUT hits theaters March 27.