The Verge: Katie Featherston and Micah Sloat

Were you both living in L.A. at the time?

FEATHERSTON: Yeah.

So you got the parts. Were you at this point thinking, "OK, this will probably not get seen by that many people but it will be a good addition to my reel?"

FEATHERSTON: I was just excited to be filming a movie, and it was very clear that Oren was incredibly passionate about the project. So I was excited to be a part of it. I wasn't writing the ending, it was just about doing the work. Everything that's happened since then has just been unbelievable.

SLOAT: And I think that while we were doing it that all of us just liked so much what we were doing and saw the potential in what we were doing, that every single scene we shot, we kind of evaluated. And if it wasn't good enough to be on the big screen, we reshot it. So that was definitely a goal from the beginning -- not that we could have ever expected what is happening now, or whatnot -- but we always were aiming for it.

FEATHERSTON: We just wanted to make the best possible movie for hardcore horror fans. We were tough on ourselves.

Well it shows. I was very pleasantly surprised at just how effectively you guys managed to scare the shit out of me.

FEATHERSTON: Ah, good!

As a moviegoer, you leave with lots of questions about how it came together. Was the dialogue entirely improvised? How much of that was completely off the cuff?

SLOAT: All of it.

FEATHERSTON: Oren has a very good vision and very good structure as far as getting what he wanted, but every bit of dialogue was improvised.

SLOAT: Yeah, we had certain topics exposition-wise that we had to bring up every scene, certain connections we had to make, but as far as actual dialogue, it's all improv.

Very impressive. And so the world premiere was at Slamdance last year?

FEATHERSTON: Actually it was at Screamfest a little before that here in L.A.

What was your reaction to seeing it with an audience for the first time?

FEATHERSTON: Ah -- it was amazing. To watch people become really invested in the movie, hear them react scared. The night scenes would come and you would hear the tension raise up a few notches. It was really cool.

SLOAT: I think that the Screamfest screening was the first time that we had something special. Oren had been working on the movie for a year in his spare time, and just to see how he all put it together was a real rush. It scared the crap out of me when I saw it. I mean, I was freaking out in the theater, and the guy next to me tapped me on the shoulder and said, "You know you're in the movie, right?" Coming out of the screening and feeling what the crowd was feeling and knowing that we were responsible for making that film was the biggest high I'd ever had in my life.

Was the fear there on the set while you were shooting? Or is this all illusion?

FEATHERSTON: I think for me, at least, you kind of get into the zone, and push yourself into that scared place, and you stay there for a while. We were scaring ourselves a lot.

SLOAT: We were shooting for 16-18 hours a day. So we were basically in character for all of our waking hours. The difference between acting scared and really being scared is slim -- it's just a matter of how much control you have over your situation. So I would say that, yes, when you see us scared on camera, we are literally scared. It was pretty freaky. It was really hard to sleep on set.

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