september 15

We don't know what you thought about the series of movies Vincent Price starred in based on the works of Edgar Allan Poe. Kinda creepy, kinda campy. (Roger Berkowitz, a co-sponsor of the Boston Film Festival, will tell you that Price was the most gregarious and gracious of guests, leaving his table to chat with every patron in Legal Seafoods and sign autographs.)

But back to movies: Newburyport-based producer Boyd Hancock and Australian-born, L.A.-based director Hayley Cloake have re-envisioned of "The House of Usher," which closes the Festival at 8:30 p.m. Sept. 15 (Tickets $9 at AMC Loews Boston Common Theater) Hancock says it's a "contemporary adaptation. We made the narrator, who was a man, a woman so it's seen on her terms. It's more of a psychological thriller. But the things that were relevant in 1839 are relevant today, like the destruction of families and the perils of isolation."

They shot it in 16 days for $130,000 on HD video. "We did not sleep," says Hancock.

It's set in an old family estate that's deteriorating. (In real life they filmed the interiors at a Rowley, MA nursing home and the exteriors at the Peabody estate outside Boston.) A guest, Jill (Izabella Miko), visits the Usher mansion. She was a former lover of Roderick and a friend of his late sister Maddy (Danielle McCarthy). As Jill becomes immersed in this (incestuous?) world, her own sanity begins to crumble and old Usher family secrets are revealed.

Does it get violent? "It's creeping violence,'' says Hancock. "This is more psychological terror. More along the lines of 'The Shining.'''

Trivia: The lead actress, Miko, wrote the song that plays as the credits roll, a song Hancock, who was at the BFF opening press conference, calls "haunting.''

Interesting note: "It was a female-driven project," says Hancock. "The producer, the director, ¾ of the cast is female, 100% of the investors are female. And it's not a chick flick."

AMC Lowes Boston Common Theater, 175 Tremont St., 617-423-3449, also  thehouseofusher.net