Bloody good cast for local horror flick

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This article was published 26/08/2009 (6258 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The remake of the horror film Mother’s Day, scheduled to begin shooting in Winnipeg on Sept. 8, is getting a bigger, better cast than the makers of the original 1980 film could have conceived.

On his personal Twitter page, the film’s director, Darren Bousman, announced the film had cast:

Jaime King, a former model who starred as Mickey Rourke’s femme fatale love interest in Sin City and who was the heroine of My Bloody Valentine, another horror remake released earlier this year.

Alexa Vega is a former child star, best known as the butt-kicking juvie secret agent in Robert Rodriguez’s Spy Kids trilogy. Vega also starred in Bousman’s horror-musical Repo! The Genetic Opera! and is taking a cameo role in Mother’s Day.

Briana Evigan has a starring role in the upcoming thriller Sorority Row (coincidentally, another horror remake based on a low-budget ’80s thriller: the 1983 movie The House on Sorority Row, due in theatres Sept. 11). Evigan, the daughter of TV actor Greg Evigan, is a dancer who also starred in the dance flick sequel Step Up 2: The Streets.

Shawn Ashmore is a Canadian actor who played Iceman in the last two X-Men movies, as well as Canadian icon Terry Fox in the 2005 TV movie Terry.

Deborah Ann Woll is another horror veteran with a continuing role of the HBO series True Blood as Jessica Hamby, a young vampire who enjoys the freedom of the vampire lifestyle after a strict religious upbringing.

The original Mother’s Day, written and directed by Charles Kaufman, was a disturbing horror-comedy in which two malevolent backwater hicks kidnap a trio of women campers and subject them to a nightmarish ordeal of rape and torture at the behest of the boys’ demented mother.

The remake, scripted by Scott Milam, offers up a more complex scenario with a psychopathic family launching an assault on the owners of a remote house that had once belonged to the outlaw family’s vengeful matriarch before she defaulted on the mortgage.

King plays the new owner of the house, and Ashmore and Evigan play besieged houseguests.

Matt O’Leary (Sorority Row) and Woll play the yet-uncast Mother’s crazed offspring.

"What we’re trying to do is elevate this outside of a genre movie," Bousman told The Hollywood Reporter last week. "I’ve done three Saw films, I’ve done Repo! and yes, this is horrific at times, but it’s much darker and deeper because of the focus on the characters."

Bousman was less circumspect when he wrote on his Twitter page upon announcing the casting: "Mothers Day is going to be INSANE!!!!"

 

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Mother’s Day executive producer Andrew Golov has a richly diverse Hollywood resumé, with credits on everything from My Little Pony to Zombie Strippers, including stints at Imagine Entertainment and Spelling Entertainment.

"I can’t begin to tell you how wonderful it is to make a picture in Winnipeg," Golov says. "Great people, a friendly city, lots of resources, and I think we’re doing well."

By way of explanation, Golov says he took on that Zombie Strippers movie at the behest of his producing partner on the strength of its title, its star (porn queen Jenna Jameson) and a million-dollar budget.

"It was the most fun movie I’ve ever made," Golov says, adding the script "was loosely based on Ionesco’s Rhinoceros.

"It’s a social-political comedy. There’s zombies and there’s naked women for sure, but all the humour is social and political and existential…and it came out pretty good.

"Sony liked it so much that they took it out theatrically in 20 cities and it’s done really, really well," Golov says. "In fact, we’re going to do Zombie Strippers 2. I wrote the script. It will be my next project after this one."

Does that mean there’s a chance the sequel might be shot here in Winnipeg? Golov suggests strippers and sub-zero temperatures probably wouldn’t be a good mix.

"If they greenlight it for a January or February shoot, probably not," Golov says. "But if it gets pushed into spring …"

randall.king@freepress.mb.ca