Wel­ling­ton-made hor­ror film The Dead Room is sure to spook audi­ences this Hal­loween.

Based on a true chilling New Zea­l­and story from the 1970s, a psych­ic and two sci­ent­ists are sent in to invest­ig­ate paranor­mal activ­ity at an Otago farm­house after its ter­ri­fied fam­ily flees.

Wel­ling­ton-based act­ress Laura Petersen, who plays the young psych­ic Holly Mat­thews is pres­sured to stay by the curi­ous sci­ent­ists, which res­ults in some ter­ri­fy­ing scenes.

Check out the trail­er and read our inter­view with Laura below:


Con­grat­u­la­tions on the role! How was it work­ing on your first scary film?
It looked amaz­ing and really creepy! I was giv­en some great advice – ima­gine a scary dog snarling at me just out of reach – that def­in­itely helped!

From the trail­er, I can see you get thrown about a lot – that must have been tough!
I was pad­ded up, and on a har­nesses. There is a scene where I’m dragged down the hall­way, which I thought would be a piece of cake – little did I know that I had to con­trol myself fly­ing down the hall­way, and I smashed into the hall – not easy as I thought!

Did any­thing ser­i­ously spooky hap­pen while you were on set?
There was one scene where every­one was con­cen­trat­ing very hard and it was very quiet and there was an earth­quake. It felt spooky, and was really inter­est­ing see­ing our nat­ur­al reac­tions on cam­era.

Are you a believ­er in the paranor­mal? Did you get to vis­it the house in Otago?
I haven’t exper­i­enced any­thing, and I don’t want to, but you can­’t rule it out. No I didn’t vis­it the house, but I would have loved to! Although I don’t think I would have been quite as brave as my char­ac­ter!

So, was the film itself filmed in Wel­ling­ton?
Yes, at Avalon in Wel­ling­ton. Also some addi­tion­al film­ing in Makara and Cent­ral Otago. We were ori­gin­ally going to film in the actu­al house, but when the crew went there to prep for film­ing, all sorts of crazy things were hap­pen­ing.  The equip­ment failed, light­ing was a bit dodge…it was bizarre.

What was the best part about being so close to home, what do you love about Wel­ling­ton?
I love the cre­ativ­ity, but also it’s so small that everything is walk­ing dis­tance. Not to men­tion the fant­ast­ic vibe, our arts cul­ture, cof­fee & food!

For a Hal­loween thrill­er ser­i­ously close to home, make sure you check out The Dead Room, in cinemas from 29th Octo­ber 2015.