"Sometimes the actual  truth is scarier than what we think is the truth."

Those are the words of Jason Todd Ipson, the writer and director of Unrest, a film set in a world of real horrors the likes of which he has first-hand knowldge.

Unrest  is a story of ghosts and premature deaths. It takes us in a very real way to a place very few of us will ever visit – at least not alive.

The movie was filmed on location in the actual Gross Anatomy lab of a huge, functioning medical facility by a director with first-hand knowledge of this grim, often chilling world. How realistic does it get? Very, as real human cadavers are actually seen onscreen side by side with the necessary special effects bodies that were used in many of the scenes of the film.

Unrest follows the terrifying experience of the film's main character, Alison Blanchard, a pre-med student with a logical mind and an empathic heart. On her first day of Gross Anatomy class, she realizes that her assigned cadaver has suffered a shocking death; a death that may have stilled the disfigured body, but left its spirit in torment.

Corri English plays Alison with a believability seldom seen in such a film. She's a beautiful young actress with a natural quality to her performance that infuses every aspect of the role and every trait of her character. We feel her passion for medicine, her psychic connection to the dead and her terror at the events that come to haunt her.

Death and dementia begin to touch Alison's classmates, as she realizes that her own life depends on her ability to unravel the mystery of her cadaver's horrible source and the history of the woman it once was. Unrest traps us in the real world of the dead, then leads us down sterile corridors in which a person's worst imagined fears come to life.

The creator of Unrest became very intimate with such a place, alone late at night during his time in med school. As he explains, "I used to go into the Gross Anatomy lab to do my dissections at around 2:00am, because the daytime hours are the time for reading textbooks. .At that time of night, you could really feel the spirits in the room watching you as you cut through the flesh to expose the anatomy."

Like his lead character, Ipson is a rare individual with a brilliant mind for science and a sensitivity for perceiving the supernatural.

"I absolutely have connections to ghosts. That's what caused this story to be written. I sense premonitions. When I'm in a room of dead people, I can feel them. I know I sound crazy, but it's the truth."

The character whose presence haunts the film, literally and metaphorically, is played by Marisa Petroro as Alita Covas, who we see in flashbacks as a bright and successful psychologist who degenerates first into a homicidal prostitute and then into a masochistic, self-mutilating suicide victim. Petroro's performance is a revelation, commanding the screen and evoking horror and heartbreaking sympathy during her brief moments seen in life. For most of the film, her place is filled by a remarkably realistic and disturbing effigy of her in death, the cadaver that makes Alison's life a living nightmare.

During filming, the three principle castmembers, Corri English, Scot Davis and Jay Jablonski felt the unsettling environment of the anatomy lab along with the rest of the cast and crew.

Scot Davis recalls, "We had people on the crew who had a fear of just walking into that room. Obviously they had to do it, but it was a serious discomfort. It's a room of death."

The principle cast members' experiences with the reality of death in the lab went far beyond the mere atmosphere of the place. Jay Jablonski explains the seriousness of their learning experience.

"On the first day that as actors we pulled back the sheet to look at our "cadaver," we did it a couple of times and Jason wasn't satisfied with our reaction. He asked the crew to leave, and we went into a freezer in the back of the lab where there was a real person who had died the night before. He pulled the sheet back, and after he observed our emotional response, he said, 'That's the reaction.'

"Seeing something that real strikes at your own mortality, when you realize that is going to be you someday. It changed our perception of how we dealt with the fake body immediately, and we went right out and did the shot in one take."

An important and bizarre part of Unrest involves one particular feature of the lab; a huge glass-walled tank filled with liquid and preserved body parts.

Jason Ipson explains the reality of the tank and his decision to incorporate it into the film.

"Cadavers are taken care of in one of two ways: they're either thrown in a vat of ethylene glycol, which is similar to formaldehyde, until they're fished out and used in Gross Anatomy, or else they have a two inch diameter steel bar that is put through the temple of the head and then hung on hooks in a freezer.

"When I was writing the script, I felt that the meat hook was something we'd seen before, even though it's a striking visual image. But the cadaver tank has never been seen, because no one would know that the cadaver tank existed except medical doctors. For me, trying to create an environment that's real, that's the epitome of it. The only reason the world knows now about a cadaver tank is because a doctor made a movie and showed it. The justification for the entire movie is to show what's truthful and let that scare the hell out of you."

The cadaver tank was a replica built for Unrest that weighed 6000 pounds before being filled with water.

The storyline of Unrest required Corri and Scot's characters to actually climb in and out of the cadaver tank, a task that turned out to be frightening on several occasions. On an occasion that called for them to be trapped inside under a lid, the water was heated too hot, leaving the actors with only four or five inches of steaming, unbreatheable air.

Corri and Jason describe another jarring accident involving the cadaver tank.

Explains Corri, "I was constantly hoisting myself in and out of the tank, and one time there was blood all over the floor. I was barefoot with blood on my feet, and I just slid and kept going."

Jason continues, "Corri jumped out of the tank, she hit the steel gurney and went right off of it, landed right on her butt. The cast was just so excited about doing a great job and being truthful, and she wasn't going to cut. Afterward she admitted, yeah, I think I hurt myself!"

Though it seems unlikely that anyone could immerse themselves in even the mild solution of formaldehyde contained in a cadaver tank, again Jason has the first hand experience to prove it can be done. One of his fellow med-school classmates actually did it herself on a dare. Real formaldehyde is carcinogenic with prolonged exposure however, and it will burn, particularly in the eyes.

Knowing the surreal world of the immense hospital where Unrest was filmed let Jason Todd Ipson utilize every bizarre aspect of the environment, making the building itself the final, indispensible part of the casting.

"That goes back to what I was saying about truth being stranger than fiction," he explains.

"The complaints that we get about Unrest are that some people say, 'oh, that couldn't be the way it really is.' The two things in that regard that stick out in the film are, number one, that there aren't people everywhere But that's because in that hospital, there aren't people everywhere. If you're there in the middle of the night, you may be the only person down in that tunnel for an entire mile and a half. Or you just might see one or two people the whole way.

Point number two is how the lights are on a motion detect, but that is absolutely true. I don't know who thought that was a good idea, when it's three o'clock in the morning in a deserted hospital and the lights are flicking on one after another and then going off. That's terrifying!"


UNREST stars:

Corri English .......... Alison Blanchard
Scot Davis ............... Brian Cross
Joshua Alba ............ Carlos Aclar
Jay Jablonski .......... Rick O'Connor
Marisa Petroro .........Alita Covas
Derrick O'Connor .... Dr. Walter Blackwell
Reb Fleming ............ Dr. Carolyn Saltz

Unrest is Rated R for violence/gore, nudity and some language.

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