Elisha Cuthbert on Her Return to Horror With ‘The Cellar’ [Interview]

Hitting theaters and Shudder this Friday is Brendan Muldowney‘s The Cellar (review), an expansion of his 2004 short film “The Ten Steps” (watch here). For the film’s lead actress Elisha Cuthbert (House of Wax), The Cellar marks her return to horror after a 15-year absence.

We had the opportunity to speak with Elisha Cuthbert about the large gap between her horror projects, as well as what drew her back into the genre.

2007’s critically-panned Captivity was the last time Cuthbert graced us with her presence in a genre film. She’s spent much of her time since then acting in television comedies like ABC’s Happy Endings and Netflix’s The Ranch, on top of raising her two children with husband and hockey player Dion Phaneuf.

After discussing how the also-critically-panned House of Wax has undergone a reappraisal in recent years, Cuthbert elaborated on why she had left the genre for so long: “I needed to take substantial breaks in between [horror] films,” she said. “Sometimes you get a horror project and then you get offered a boatload of them. After House of Wax, there was a huge onslaught of material that was coming to me that was all genre-based and, frankly, I think the genre can be so great if it’s done really well” (see: House of Wax), “but it can get ugly too” (see: Captivity).

What was so bad about Captivity? Well, that film “went through a 45-page script rewrite after we filmed it,” Cuthbert said. “So the movie I signed on to do is not the one that got released.”

So what was it about The Cellar that drew her back in? “Honestly I just got excited reading it,” she said. “I thought there was a maturity, or a sophistication, to the writing. But I had also had my own daughter and could relate to where my character was at her life with her children. I understood the feeling of wanting to go to the depths of the world to find your child, so that’s what connected me to the script.“

In the film, Cuthbert plays a mother whose daughter mysteriously vanishes in the cellar of their new house. She soon discovers there is an ancient and powerful entity controlling their home that she will have to face or risk losing her family’s souls forever.

Eoin Macken, Abby Fitz and Dylan Fitzmaurice-Brady also star.

The Cellar will be in theaters and will stream on Shudder April 15.

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