Supernatural horror Molly Hartley

Mickey Liddell, director of the upcoming supernatural horror film The Haunting of Molly Hartley, told SCI FI Wire that he felt obligated to pull off a particularly pivotal scene involving a baptism. In the film, a 17-year-old named Molly Hartley (Haley Bennett) struggles for a fresh start at a new private school after her deeply religious mother (Marin Hinkle) has tried to kill her. Now she's experiencing disturbing visions and hearing strange voices. It turns out that Molly's soul has been dealt to the devil, and he'll claim it on her fast-approaching 18th birthday. "My favorite scene in the movie, which was something that was really important to me the whole time, ... I think religion is really scary," Liddell said in an interview. "So I have a lot of religion in there. Overzealous people about religion scare me a lot, on one side or the other, you know? So that's a theme that goes throughout the whole film. I grew up in Oklahoma, and it was always kind of scary growing up, and I remember I belonged to a Baptist church." Liddell added, "In the Baptist Church you get baptized when you're, I don't know, 13 or 14 or something like that. And there's this big baptism that's up on a big wall. It's very theatrical. The lights are on it and everything, and the preacher takes you in there. You wear robes, and you go underneath, and the whole congregation watches you. And I always thought that was the scariest thing. Even when I was doing it, I wasn't really sure what I was doing, but it was what everyone else did. And I just thought it was really theatrical and really scary." As a result, Liddell made certain to include such a scene in Molly Hartley. And he prodded his filmmaking team to make it match his memories as closely as possible. "I kept looking for churches, and we wrote it in," Liddell said. "Even the writers were like, 'I don't know what you're talking about. You mean, it's on a wall?' I was like, 'Yes, yes. The whole congregation is watching you.' So I have this incredible scene with Molly, when she's trying to save her soul. She goes to one of her friends who's very religious, and the whole scene takes a real different turn when she's in the baptismal pool. But I had to make that work, and it's really one of my favorite scenes." Liddell explained that the scene alters the entire film. "At that point," he said, "you find out a lot of information about who's on her side and who's not and what's happening to her." The Haunting of Molly Hartley opens nationwide on Halloween. --Ian Spelling