Interview: Producer Alexandre Aja and Co-Star Jeremy Sisto on THE OTHER SIDE OF THE DOOR

Arriving in theaters this weekend is the supernatural thriller The Other Side of the Door, which stars Jeremy Sisto and Sarah Wayne Callies as grieving parents who discover the dangers of not obeying the laws of natural order after their deceased son returns from beyond the grave. The film takes place in the wondrous location of Mumbai and incorporates many real-life aspects of Indian beliefs and mysticism.

During the recent press day, Daily Dead had the opportunity to speak with Sisto and producer Alexandre Aja about what initially attracted them to the project, their experiences working over in Mumbai and more. Check out the highlights from our interviews with the pair and look for The Other Side of the Door in theaters Friday, courtesy of 20th Century Fox.

This is such a unique movie, especially considering where the genre is right now. Can you discuss what you guys saw in it before coming on board?

Alexandre Aja: It's definitely unique. I got the script a few years back when I was finishing Horns. I read that story and from the beginning, this terrible tragedy that happened to Maria, and the fact that she has to choose between her son and her daughter—which one she's going to save—the horror of living with that choice made me really be in the story right away. In every project, that's what I'm looking for. I'm looking for something that I can actually relate to, but also create an experience that's not just watching the same thing again and again.

So often in horror, it's always the same thing again and again, so you just want to find the story that's engaging, a story that gives you a way to create an emotion for the audience. As a part of the audience, that's what I like. I like when I just forget that I'm in the screening room and also, the opportunity of exploring India as a backdrop was amazing. It was really unique.

Jeremy Sisto: I was pretty excited when I heard they were offering me a horror movie. I was expecting to be running away from goblins or whatever [laughs]. But the fact that this movie, its foundation is this very traumatic dynamic of parents losing their child and the entry point of the story being such an emotionally catastrophic event was intriguing to me. Then, to watch this woman go on this journey where she questioned her own sanity, questioned the things about the spirit world that she had not before was exciting to watch, and then couple that with placing it in India where there's a long history of spirituality, of a connection with death and the line between life and death. I thought there was a lot to be explored. I was excited to do it.

And it was interesting to me to play somebody that was drawn to move to another culture and start a family there—that seems very unique, it's very different from me. When I had my kid, I felt the need to hold on to what I knew, but as an actor, you're always excited when you can add some kind of a way to understand the character in how he's different than yourself.

How intimidating was the project in terms of filming on location and in the material?

Jeremy Sisto: The biggest challenge for me was I had to leave my young kids for a month, which was really hard. I didn't like that at all. The rest was fun. It was hot and it was a different way of communicating, obviously the language barrier was a challenge at times and the traffic is insane. It really was a good experience and it wasn't a huge challenge in the sense that I knew my role was to play realistically this grief and also this caring towards my wife. Johannes had lived with it for a long time, so that's a great thing to be able to just trust your director, because he knows what he wants and what he's talking about. It was a good gig.

Was the community in Mumbai supportive or were they superstitious with anything, considering the material you guys were dealing with?

Alexandre Aja: It was weird because we developed the script, fitting ourselves from everything we could find on the Internet and books and reference. But there is that temple that really exists in India that's supposed to be the most haunted place in India. There are a lot of elements to this story that we used from their real beliefs, but we then realized that there are some rules when you walk into India. One of them is to not basically use their beliefs in an inappropriate way or in a blasphemous way—it's not censorship, but it was more about not insulting their beliefs. We had to stay with inventing something new for this film that's also based on something very real.

The Aghori tribe does exist though; it's a real community and belief of people that are worshiping death and calling themselves the ashes of the dead and they basically live in the idea of death. Really, it's very unique, but we had to bring a twist to all this to be able to respect and stay there and show respect to the Indian culture. It's important. There is a different cultural approach of death, for sure, in India. It's much more about how the ideas of death and life are reliant on each other, where in our society somehow we want to have very hypocritical ways of how to keep it very separate. We resist death, where there they embrace it as a natural occurrence.

What was your most memorable moment from working on this project, Jeremy?

Jeremy Sisto: I took a tour into one of the slums, I guess is what they call them. It was pretty fascinating how much actual real business goes on there, all the recycling in the country goes through these areas even, but just how the people are living was pretty eye-opening. Not all bad, as there was some amazing community stuff going on when I went through. It was just a very different world.

We filmed in what was Rudyard Kipling's house, which was now an art academy. It was beautiful. There were also a lot of bats there. They were beautiful to watch too, except that for an hour every night they would be making all this noise, and we'd just have to accept it and stop shooting. It was that loud [laughs]. Then I'd go to the hotel and go swimming at night, and when it got dark and you could see all the bats flying around; that was gorgeous to watch too, except they'd come down and smack you in the head while you were just minding your own business. I ended up having a love-hate relationship with those bats [laughs].