Trent Haaga is the screenwriter for Deadgirl, a film which has generated a ton of buzz since its well-received premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival. And why not? A movie about zombie rape, high school exile, and the dark depths to which humanity can plummet sounds like a lot of fun.

Luckily for the abnormal among us, Deadgirl is getting a limited release midnight screening on Friday and Saturday, and Houston’s own Landmark River Oaks Theatre is one of only 10 theaters in the country to get a glimpse.

We talked to Haaga about the film, to prepare us for the weekend.

29-95: People have been throwing around the words “controversial” and sometimes “misogynistic” in reviews of Deadgirl lately. Have you been to a screening yet? What’s the response been?
Haaga:I’ve been to several screenings of the movie at festivals – Toronto, Austin, Los Angeles … the audience response so far has been really great and supportive. I think that a lot of the accusations of misogyny, etc, are easier to make in the anonymous world of the internet … when people come to the screenings and see that we, the filmmakers, are thoughtful young men and not a bunch of drooling animals, then it becomes easier to not simply slap a label on us or the film. But as far as I’m concerned people can say whatever they want to about the movie as long as they talk about it!

Deadgirl got my attention immediately because it’s a film that’s novel and unusual. Have you been frustrated by the industry’s lack of notice for films that aren’t part of some played-out franchise?
Absolutely. I love the genre and have loved it since I was a kid. But as I get older I begin to get less and less of a thrill from mainstream horror movies precisely because of this. Deadgirl was written largely as a response to some of the stuff that I had been watching at the time. If I see another movie with a van full of teenagers on the way to a rave or camping who get picked off one by one by a psycho redneck, I’m gonna blow my head off.

I read that when [co-directors] Marcel Sarmiento and Gadi Harel approached you for a script, you didn’t want to give them Deadgirl. How did they convince you?
I had written Deadgirl many years before and had shown it to a few people and the reaction was so negative that I honestly had begun to believe that the script really was “un-filmable” and too “out there” for anyone to ever produce. After much cajoling, Gadi and Marcel convinced me to actually let them read the script. A week later they called me up and said that they wanted to make it. I wasn’t really convinced that they’d do it, but they offered me a little bit of option money and I was broke so I agreed thinking they wouldn’t actually get it off the ground and that I’d at least get some money before putting the script back on the shelf to collect dust.

How long had you been holding on to that script? Where were you in your life when you wrote it?
I wrote the script in 1999. Gadi and Marcel got it in about 2005. We shot in 2007. At the time I wrote it, I was 27 years old. Living in New York City. I had just written a movie for Troma Studios – The Toxic Avenger Part 4. I was a little burned out and just wanted to write something that I wanted to see, something that was close to me, something that was indicative of my taste. I based the film on locations that we had just used in Toxie 4 and dipped into my frustrated youth growing up in a small mid-western town … and Deadgirl was born.

How much input did you have once production started? Do you feel like the finished product lives up to your twisted vision?
It was an extremely low budget film so I was very involved for a writer. I worked closely with Gadi and Marcel doing some re-writes (truthfully, the original script was maybe even more nihilistic and bleak than the final product). I also Assistant Directed the film, so I was on set the whole time, standing by the camera, seeing how it was done. My wife, Lynh, was the costume designer, and even my son, Max, is credited as “set mascot.” So it was a real Haaga Family Affair.

Don’t miss out on a chance to see it while it’s here. Deadgirl is one of 29-95’s midnight movie series titles, and I’ll be there Friday night, July 24 to host the kick-ass premiere. Come and see me, eat a bit of Pink's pizza, check out Deadgirl and bring a little levity to your weekend.