Somewhere in a forest in Sydney the first of many screams were heard as production on new independent horror film “Rags” began filming only a few months ago.

The project sees director Benjamin Morton and actress Jenna Bridge re-team after their award winning short film P.O.V’s success last year.

The film follows a group of international backpackers into the Australian bush as they go on a tour of the local legend of a ghost girl named Rags but what they find is a horror like no other.

Starring a group of passionate up and coming Australian actors and independently funded, the project hopes to bring a fresh take to the horror genre in the creation of a complex, interesting female monster in their ghost Rags.

“I wanted to create a female monster that was more then a sexy siren luring men to their doom, I wanted her to be an equal threat to all genders. A character that had an interesting and deep origin story with complex goals and motivations of her own. ” Said director Benjamin Morton.

Ben had been developing the concept of his film series when he first met Jenna working on P.O.V. He knew she was perfect for the role. “Jenna has a great range and sense of duality to her, one minute she could be just hanging out in a singlet, shorts and a pair of thongs, the next minute stunning onlookers in a bikini, to looking a million dollars walking down the red carpet.”

They soon got to work over the next year developing the personality and look of the character as Ben explained the story of the character and her journey over the planned 9 films. After a year of planning and organising Ben sought out his eclectic cast of “victims”.

Auditioning dozens of actors for each role, including a pleasant but unexpected casting with identical twins Tiffany and Melissa Bull who both originally applied for the same role but after meeting them Ben was so impressed he rewrote the script to split the character into two sisters, we were also lucky to cast Tim Mason Scott and David Ross as Sam and Kenny whose comedic timing almost steals the show a couple of times along with Victoria Ferrara from Housos as Mary, Ross Kupisiewics as Chris, Scarlet Brukmann as Anna and Alec Hall as Dean.

“The hardest role to cast was of the lead role of Sarah.” said Ben. “We cast for nearly a year looking for the perfect person to play opposite Jenna’s character but when Lyndsey Fay MacNaughts name came up I remembered her from the short film “Absolution” in the same competition his film P.O.V won the year before and after auditioning her I knew instantly she, like Jenna, was a star waiting to shine.

Filming over 3 months on a shoestring budget the filming has now wrapped on the first of the nine planned films in the horror series centred around the titular ghost. The film has already been submitted to multiple festivals around the nation.