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.