For film producer Kevin Dewalt, his former home city was the perfect spooky location to make a zombie movie.
“We needed a location that looked abandoned and here everything was overgrown so it really looks like nobody has been here for 20 years so it was just perfect,” he told the Times-Herald.
Dewalt, CEO of Minds Eye Entertainment, based in Regina, has been filming 13 Eerie in Moose Jaw’s old animal park since the beginning of October. The film is an Ontario / Saskatchewan interprovincial co-production produced by Don Carmody Productions and Minds Eye Entertainment.
“I remember as a kid coming to Moose Jaw’s animal park. As a kid, it seemed huge,” Dewalt said.
He said the script called for an isolated island surrounded by water that used to be a penitentiary called 13 Eerie.
The movie tells the story of a group of forensic undergraduate students, who are undertaking a scientific expedition on a remote island. What they don’t know is that the area was formerly used as a biological testing ground for life-term criminals left for dead, who are not quite as dead as you might expect.
The living cast includes Katharine Isabelle (Ginger Snaps) in the role of Megan, Michael Shanks (Stargate, Burn Notice, Smallville) in the role of Professor Tomkins, Brendan Fletcher (The Pacific, Freddy vs Jason) cast as Josh, Nick Moran (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels) as Larry and Brendan Fehr (Bones, CSI:Miami) in the role of student Daniel.
Dewalt, who went to Queen Elizabeth Elementary School before moving to Regina when he was 11, said people from Moose Jaw watching the film may recognize some areas but will be surprised by how different special effects and sets can change a location.
For example, the opening scene of the movie will show the students arriving on a vast river but it was actually filmed on the rather slow moving Moose Jaw Creek.
Read more in a future Times-Herald edition.
