Barbarella chats with THE CELLAR's Elisha Cuthbert, Eoin Macken and Brendan Muldowney

Hey, my friends. Barbara here. Irish horror film THE CELLAR premieres tomorrow in theaters and on Shudder. In the film, a family has just moved into a scary but beautiful house. When her daughter goes missing, a mother becomes convinced this is home. I had the opportunity to speak with writer/director Brendan Muldowney and cast Elisha Cuthbert and Eoin Macken about their experiences. Check it out.

Barbara: I enjoy seeing different ideas in the horror genre, and I find the use of mathematical formulas in THE CELLAR very intriguing. What inspired the idea and why are you trying to scare people into doing math?

Brendan: Because... well, what is it, Elisha?

Elisha: Math is the work of the devil.

Eoin: Yeah. Boom!

Brendan: First time using this. Alright, good. Look, this is from a short film originally inspired by Robert Wise's THE HAUNTING. I just wanted to make a short ambient film. Then, as I fleshed out the short, I obviously had to take the mythology and expand it. I knew math had to be involved. I'm very interested in quantum physics and things like string theory. I mean, it's not like I fully understand it, but I love that stuff, and I think I kind of gravitated towards it - dimensions and things like that.

Barbara: Oh, very interesting. Could you talk a bit about the location? What kind of requirements did you have for this?

Brendan: I wanted a house with character, and the most important thing I wanted was a house that had a long hallway leading to a cellar door, because to me, one of the scariest things would be someone going downstairs to get a drink of water at night and having to stop and look down that long hallway and see a door that might even be slightly open or something. I couldn't find it before entering this house. And our search has been restricted due to funding and funding. We were supposed to shoot in this certain county in Ireland called Roscommon. As soon as I entered this house, I saw a large open hallway. I saw a long hallway, and there was no cellar door at the end, but there was space to work. We were able to build something. The added bonus was that everywhere else in the house was amazing. It was an amazing house.

Barbara: Yes. It was beautiful.

Brendan: I think where we were staying was actually where the original house was.

Elisha: That's right.

Brendan: There was an old house there, and they had to tear it down or something, or it was torn down or burned down, and they rebuilt it over it.

Eoin: And our cottages were above underground cellars or a chapel or something, right?

Elisha: Yes. Which I was actually upset they told us. We had to stay there in quarantine for two weeks, and I just thought that was information I probably didn't need to know.

Brendan: And then you realize that figure in the shadows was actually not your imagination.

Barbara: Brendan, did you have a casting in mind when you were writing?

Brendan: No, because I wrote this in so many different ways and with different character versions. First I wrote the characters. I've known Eoin for a long time, and so it was a very simple conversation with Eoin, and then I had a conversation with Elisha, and we were on the same page in many ways that it was really painless. All the casting on that, it was very easy.

Barbara: Elisha and Eoin, when you observe each other, do you criticize yourself or take it in? How do you feel watching your performance?

Elisha: Actually, I'm really struggling. I'm not going to lie. I really do. I try to avoid looking at my...