This game was based on a real-life 17th-century Romanian noblewoman who is credited with killing 650 virgin girls and bathing in their blood in an effort to stay young. Countess de Bathory, along with Vlad Tepes, were inspirations for Bram Stoker's Dracula. The movie takes place in New Orleans, and this is the last full-length feature shot in the area before Katrina came through and destroyed much of it.

The only person in the cast who didn't like games, actress Samaire Armstrong, also confirmed that a lot of weird things were going on during the shooting of the movie. She has one more scary film coming out, The Rise, and after that is swearing off the horror genre. This movie is so scary she can't even sit through a screening.

Armstrong, Peterman and Bell (who also directed) talked about the spooky happenings as well as working with producer McG (Charlie's Angels) in interviews with Science Fiction Weekly. The film opens nationwide on March 24.What possessed you to do a movie about a video game that kills?

Bell: We were ahead of our time. We originally wrote a movie called Mercury that was kind of like The Bourne Identity with a video game, but it was long before that came out, and we thought we had a unique take on it.

Are you concerned that it is going to be compared to The Ring, or something like Zathura or Jumanji?

Peterman: We did ours in 1999, and that was three years before The Ring and two years before Bourne Identity, so we thought it was very original. It's a super-cool reinvention of James Bond. So we decided we'd do something that was a bit like Mercury, which we do hope to still do someday.

Bell: We thought, well, if Freddy Krueger comes in your dreams and kills you, what if you play a game and you die in real life? It seems a great way to use a video game as a story engine.So, do you guys like video games?

Peterman: We are big fans of video games.

Bell: Big fans.Which ones?

Bell:We like Fatal Frame. It's a slower, very scary and creepy horror game. That's what we modeled the game in the movie [on] a little bit. And we like Resident Evil, Doom and Silent Hill, and we want to combine the creepier game that really has some cool hot action in it.It's interesting that you have a movie that a game will be created into rather than the slew of movies that are made out of video games these days.

Bell: We wanted to create the same feeling of a game with the movie, and have moments that are of very slow and creepy that draw you in and [you] still have really great violent moments of impact, like Doom.What do you look for in a successful game?

Peterman: Well, Fatal Frame is a great because you are treated like you're in a movie. It's a very cinematic game. It's treated very sophisticated. In the Resident Evil and Doom games, it's like you blow s--- up, you know what I mean? It's pretty simple. Our game in the film was basically made to create this really eerie mood and then spice it up with some of those elements that make Resident Evil and Doom so good.So where is the game? Will it be out on time?

Bell: We have it in development. We first put together the movie and made sure we had it 100 percent, and we decided to make it. When we brought it to Hollywood Pictures we thought we could make the dollar stretch as an indie film and do the video game at the same time. It would make a great game.So there won't be a game that people can go to when they see the movie?

Bell: Not quite. Everyone is bummed the full-on game is not coming out with the movie. We want to have a demo [on the Web site] online released with the movie and then have something that is certainly very playable with the DVD release after that. Of course, if the movie is successful, they will pony up the dough to make the full game.

Peterman: Our big plan was to have a lot of fun with the mingling of the video game and the film.It seems like this is a very innovative combination of film and game.

Peterman: We're trying. But imagine having a game that is going to have clues that you can only find in the movie, and that you then can unlock hidden levels or playable characters and other things only if you watch the movie closely.Why do you think games can make good movies?

Bell: Games are becoming so detailed, and storylines are getting so much more layered, and [that] lends itself to a movie more so than in the past.Was there a lot of game playing among the cast? I know Frankie [Muniz] and Adam [Goldberg] play a lot.

Bell: We were taken aback because the cast played a lot. It was amazing to see, especially Jimmi Simpson and Jon Foster. They would go back and play any number of video games for hours.

Peterman: Brent and I play a lot of games, but we were shocked to see how much time these guys play those games. Did any of the cast really hate video games, or not know anything about them?

Bell: They all were pretty well versed, except one, Samaire [Armstrong], who didn't play games at all, and that fit her character perfectly, so it didn't really matter.What was the favorite game to be played on the set?

Peterman: God of War came out while we were shooting, and it blew everybody away. It kept getting stolen on the set. Halo 2 and Resident Evil 4 came out during that time; perhaps [we] played those more than we should have.How is your game different from the others?

Bell: We want to create a game that is creepy and exciting, but in our case it's blowing up 10-year-old schoolgirls who have been dead for hundreds of years.

Peterman: And of course, all the moms and dads out there are going to just love that!Now, not to sound morbid, but it's a possibility. Have you ever considered that after the movie and game come out, there may be a kid who dies after playing the game?

Bell: Wow. Well, first off, that would be horrible. If it happened, that would be horrible. We hope people play games we create for entertainment purposes, and hope that someone would have the sense to know it is not reality. We hope that no one would try to duplicate it in real life.How is this going to be different from similar types of game-related films?

Bell: Basically going into the movie, we knew we did not want to make [a] straight teen-horror-type film. We wanted to use a high-technology game to make a very old film, and we used all of New Orleans. We found old plantation mansions, and the production designer had some parts of the game based on actual locations.The house in the game looks pretty spooky. It looks great.

Bell: The house is based on architecture in the area. It was something that was scanned in and designed.This is based on a real story? The Blood Countess?

Bell: Yes, the Blood Countess is a real woman from the Carpathian mountains, and there are a lot of books about her. She and Vlad the Impaler were inspirations for Bram Stoker's Dracula. She was responsible for killing and torturing an estimated 650 virgins. She killed and tortured them and bathed in their blood because she thought they made her younger.

Peterman: She was basically inbred and a little messed up in the head. We couldn't make up that stuff; we couldn't put half of what we found out about her.Why did you pick her for the main subject of your game?

Bell: She came up when we were doing research for another horror project. No one in recent years has done a great film about her and all her torture mechanisms. You can't make up what she really did any better. Originally, we were thinking of her story being a trilogy, because lore of her really exists. We came up with a great gothic story of a vampire in a city where she fled to open up a finishing school and killed the last of the girls here. She kidnapped girls in the countryside and killed them.

Peterman: She's one of the sickest women of all time. Sounds like it. She sounds like a great character. Now you shot this in New Orleans, and were one of the last movies to shoot there. Did any of the places get washed away in Hurricane Katrina?

Bell: A lot of places are now gone. A lot of our crew still lives there. Frankie Muniz has been back because his fiancé is from there. He went back to some of the locations where we shot, and they're gone.

Peterman: I'm almost positive our film was the last completed film before the hurricane hit. Fort Pike was under 15 feet of water for two months, and two really big locations we used [were] under 35 feet of water, and the families who worked with us who lived there, we knew. One of the families had to be airlifted out of there. A lot of locals worked on the film, and some people who worked with us lost their homes.Wow, you were lucky not to get hit during filming!

Peterman: We spent four months there, and to come back and look at satellite photos and see the place you used to get coffee and the off-ramp to get to the hotel all completely under water, it was very strange, it was just horrifying. It's tragic.

Bell: It's very sad, and I think it will never be the same there.What did you guys think of the other games-to-movies?

Bell: Most of them are like Tomb Raider; they are a straight adaptation of the game. Most of them seem to be that way, and we don't get too excited about it. Doom seemed like it was going to be low-rent, and it turned into something much better.

Peterman: We liked the POV in the movie that tipped their hat to the game; it was nice to see. We want to use the video game as a story engine. We want to look at the possibility of actually using a video game in a film to propel the story forward; it's a new form of entertainment that we think can be used in many different ways.What was it like working with McG as the producer?

Bell: McG is a unique personality in this business. He taught us how to stay excited and positive. He's a very energetic guy, very positive, and nice to have around when you're wondering which battle you will fight and can't fight them all and will start losing them.

Peterman: He was a big supporter, especially during post-production, when it's just as crazy. We shot the movie in 25 days, and no one thought the post-production would be as complicated as it was. And so, without McG pushing everyone to keep moving ... He urged us to finish the movie properly, and he's an amazing guy to be around. He loves movies.Was he very hands-on during the filmmaking?

Bell: He let us do what we had to do. We don't aspire to make the same movies as McG. He just wants us to make things better, and he would help us do that. He would look at what we're doing and remind us that it is a movie and that what I should be shooting is what I would want to be watching in the movie theater. He keeps things simple and down to the core about why we're all there in the first place.Did anything unusual happen during the making of this film? Sometimes you hear about weird things going on while making movies like this.

Peterman: Well, a big f------ hurricane came through a month after we left!

Bell: Well, I don't know if we can talk about it, but weird things did happen in post-production. On the second day of shooting we had this weird on-set possession that caused us to reschedule the movie immediately.

Peterman: We can't talk too much about that, really. Now, come on, you can't tell us that there was an on-set possession without explaining!

Peterman: Basically, what happened was that some people involved in the film lost their minds, and they thought they had been possessed by the spirit of Elizabeth de Bathory.

Bell: And I mean for real. We may even have caught some of it on film, and it was truly to the point that we had to shut down production the second day of shooting for this reason. We were shut down for almost 15 hours, and a lot of it was captured on film. It's not in the final version. It's not something that was in the movie.

Peterman: The movie almost never was. You're kidding. You have to be kidding.

Bell: We're not making that up; it's something that happened. And keep an eye out; you may see some of it in the movie. Here we were, telling a ghost story about someone who actually existed, and we're in New Orleans, which is a very creepy town to begin with, and the second day of a 25-day shoot we have this kind of thing happen, and it put us in full panic mode.What happened? You have to explain!

Bell: Someone essentially lost their mind a little bit. It was their first film. It wasn't a cast member, but it was someone who was possessed. Someone may say it was a nervous breakdown, they thought they were the Countess and that what was happening, it was full embodiment. Dude, it was weird.

Peterman: Those same people, when they watched a preview screening, had to leave the movie theater. That is a word to wise: If you're freaked out by scary stuff, you probably should not do horror movies.

Samaire Armstrong, I heard that you didn't like to play video games, is that true?

Armstrong: I have never done the gaming thing. I never did it before. My parents weren't into having me do it; they never bought me any.Were you ever into any game, ever?

Armstrong: The only game I was ever really, really good at was Tetris, and I mean really good. When I'm driving in the freeway traffic, always wonder how to fit in, fit here, fit there. It's the same with Tetris.This lack of knowledge actually helped your character, right?

Armstrong: Yes. My character is oblivious to this large, large world, and the rest of her friends around her have their games all decked out. They have their games personalized; they have their names on it. Did you have more of an appreciation of the games? Did you like them more after doing the movie?

Armstrong: No, I didn't. I would be there on the set and watch them, and it was fun to watch, but I wasn't into the whole scene. They would play for hours.The other thing I heard is this bizarre series of things going on while shooting on the set.

Armstrong: It was bizarre bizarre. There was a lot of really creepy things that went on. Of course, it was filmed in New Orleans, and that's a scary place anyway, and I went on tour to hear the stories of the gravesites, the bodies and spirits and hauntings ... strange things happened, for sure.What was so scary?

Armstrong: I got really scared when Sophia Bush's character got eaten. I can't tell what happened, exactly, but a lot of moments occurred where reality and fictions were blurred. There's a lot of blood.What was the strangest thing that happened to you?

Armstrong: I felt locked and trapped in my body during a dream. I got out of it and turned on the lights, and it was the exact same feeling as in the movie. Things were coming out, and it was the exact same scream that I did in real life. It happened before we were shooting the scene where that happens to me.Wow, you were really prepared for it?

Armstrong: I was definitely prepared for it. It's not hard for me to prepare for scary things. My birthday is on Halloween, too.Aha, so you're queen of Halloween. You shouldn't be scared.

Armstrong: People ask if I'm a bit psychic, but I think I'm just in touch with my feelings. It's not real hocus-pocus, but it's feeling empathy toward someone else's pain or truly frightening moments.And you have a few more scary movies coming, right?

Armstrong: Yeah, and I think I won't ever do one again. I vowed to never do a scary movie again, never.Did you always feel that way?

Armstrong: At the start of my career, I said, "Hey, where's my scary movie?" But after doing that one in New Orleans, and, you know, having had séances and doing the Ouija board, I think that maybe if you think about ghosts and things like that long enough, something will show up that I don't want to see.Were you scared during Rise too?

Armstrong: Yeah, that's a psychic film with Lucy Liu and Michael Chiklis, and it really affected me and made me sad. I play Jenny, who is a young girl in Hollywood.And then there's the romantic comedy, It's a Boy Girl Thing?

Armstrong: Yeah, that's where I switch bodies with a guy and he becomes a girl, and I had to understand the male mind.How did you do that?

Armstrong: I talked to my brother, I followed my friends. I asked them a lot of questions.Have you seen Stay Alive yet?

Armstrong:I started to watch it, but I couldn't watch it. I had to run out; I couldn't do it. It was really scary. I think the only way I could watch it is with a fast-forward button and with Brent and Matt next to me the whole way.It's that scary?

Armstrong: It's that scary!