“The thing is, it wasn't like the girl in peril screaming, running around with her tits hanging out, running for her boyfriend. It wasn't like that. It's a very classic, very straightforward ghost story.”
On the directors
“I was really eager to work with them, Danny and Oxide Pang. I loved their movie The Eye. It’s eerie. It totally wigged me out."”
On the directors
“They take into account absolutely every single detail. With every frame it's like they've painted a picture. They choose colors based on their symbolic meanings and their culture. I didn't have any idea.”
On the directors
“I was anticipating sort of a problem initially, but it wasn’t ever a problem because they’re really smart, and they know the language. They’re really emotionally in tune. Sometimes you know what they want by the way they look at you. They’re really sensitive guys. When I started this horror movie, I was like, “Oh great, it was going to be a big scream fest,” but there’s a lot of actual heart in this movie.”
“The setting of the film is really a classically American setting. It’s a jovial, beautiful sunflower farm. At the same time, these really incredibly terrifying, threatening occurrences are taking place every single day that this girl is there. We only had a few sequences that were actually outside. The inside of the house was really dark. Most of our horror sequences are in the basement and the cellar. The Pang brothers were involved in colors. They loved green. The whole house inside was really green toned.”
“I had always been absolutely, totally scared of ghosts. But when I was on the film, about half-way through, I had a really trippy experience in my hotel room. It’s an old hotel. One night, I opened my eyes, and this image of this woman just filled my entire view. People called the hotel room to see if I was okay. I wouldn’t talk to anyone about it before I said, “I totally get how you guys can think I’m just getting into the movie, and this could be a reflection of what’s going on in my work.” But objectively, it was just there.”
“We had a farm out in the middle of nowhere, and any direction you looked in, you really couldn't see anything. It was very, very flat. You could see your dog run away for miles. We had a big sunflower farm, a real one. It was huge. Aesthetically, it was probably the coolest set I've been to."”
“It was one of the most emotionally and physically strenuous movies I’ve ever been on, and I wasn’t expecting that at all. I thought it would be somewhat of a break, like a one-dimensional horror movie, but it turned out to really not be like that for me.”
“It wasn’t even really the character that drew me to it, but it was the filmmakers and the story. I thought it was really cool that it was set where it was and the isolation of the whole movie. She’s really a desperate character. It’s nice when you can see a young, teenage girl get up and kick butt."”
On the effects
“A lot of the things were practical that I didn’t have to make believe. Most of what I’m responding to was really there for me. Even the ghosts, we had someone standing there even though it didn’t look like what it looks like in the movie. I didn’t have to turn around and scream at nothing. But I sort of like doing that. At first you feel totally absurd and ridiculous, but you get into it and you start to feel less stupid.”
“I'm catatonically terrified in The Messengers most of the time, a lot of screaming, actually. It's about a family who is kind of in a rough time in their lives. They are financially, not very stable and there's some animosity between the daughter, myself, and the parents for a few pretty good reasons. So they move out to a farm to escape the hectic city life and see if they can get on their feet again and they enter a pretty spooky house and the only person who really sees any of these things going on or is threatened by them in any way, is my character and, because of some previous history, no one believes anything that she says."”
“It's also a pretty claustrophobic movie even though it's set out in the middle of nowhere. There's a pretty strong sense of isolation but, when there is nowhere to run, you start to feel very closed in. She's alone all the time; a pretty vulnerable character, but towards the end she basically has to suck it up and figure out why this is happening and get to the bottom of it.”
“We did The Messengers up in Saskatchewan. It's my first horror movie and actually, the Pang Brothers' first American release. We were in Regina.”
“When I got to work with John Corbett and Penelope Ann Miller, there’s a cellar scene which is this really long call (?), the notorious 191 or something like that, and the scene was just a turn on and it took us weeks to shoot and we were all in it. The whole cast was in it so we all got to be together. But a lot of the movie I’m by myself. But I never got scared on set. I loved the directors. They’re great guys. Both of them are really sweet. The whole crew was awesome. It was sort of a really typical movie on location experience. Everyone had a good time.”
“Every movie that I've ever done always looks fake in some way and this one just looks real. They did such a good job and the pacing of it is so eerie”
“You can't be a method actor in a movie like this, because everything is circumstantial that happens to this girl.”
“I always have loved horror movies and I really love that Asian influence over here right now. There have been a few movies and this is the Pangs’ first American release. I thought that was really exciting which was the main reason I wanted to do it, but I would do more horror movies. You don't do stuff like this just because it's good for your career, but because it's fun.”
“At first I see them as part of life on a sunflower farm, always flying around until I realize they always seem to be there when situations turn creepy. When my character first comes into the house, she's checking it out and a black thing kind of flashes by the window. They're very mysterious, very ominous and are always messing with my head.”
“The film is rugged. It's dirty. It is dark and sharp-looking. There are no soft edges. It is like everything on the farm — hard, like the scythes and the sickles and the old dead tractor.”
“I love all of the horror movies that they’re making over there, as well as the ones that are being remade over here! I think they’re really scary. Just because they have that certain style, a lot of people say they’re far too similar, but different filmmakers bring different things to them.”
“This is their first American movie. Usually when studios do these Asian-style movies, they give them to an American director, especially the remakes. I thought it was going to be really hard because of the language barrier, but of course they know English really well.”
“It's creepy! It’s really slow for a little while and then it jumps at you. Basically, it's all about my character trying to prove that the spirits are really trying to communicate with her and that she's not insane or doing it for attention.”
“At one point, she gets scratched all over her neck, and her parents think she did it to herself. But she knows they need to do something before it's too late, because it’s potentially a really dangerous situation. It's terrifying.”
On the making of the movie
“It was really hard! It was just physically strenuous having the same expression is so many frames. Scary face one, scary face two... For two weeks straight I was just screaming and just acting terrified.”
