Dead cell = dead friend.
That’s the premise behind Blood Cell, a Web-only series starring Jessica Rose, a.k.a. Internet phenom lonelygirl15. Created by filmmaker Eduardo Rodriguez (TV’s “Fear Itself”), the series stars Rose as Julia, a young woman who receives a late-night cell phone call from her friend Susan. A desperate Susan tells Julia that she has been kidnapped. But Julia can’t turn off her cell or call the police lest the masked madman snuff out her friend’s life. The kidnapper proceeds to tease Julia with texts which indicate that he’s watching her every move. Will Julia be able to save her friend?
Blood Cell originally premiered last October on The WB’s website in the U.S., and CTV is re-broadcasting all 18 episodes online here in Canada. Six have been posted as of this writing, and you can watch Episode 1 here: http://watch.ctv.ca/blood-cell/blood-cell/blood-cell—episode-1/#clip306311.
We spoke to Rodriguez about creating Blood Cell, working with the Web, and his background in horror.

Eduardo, you directed a couple of short horror films prior to creating Blood Cell. What is your background as a horror fan?
It all started with H.P. Lovecraft. When I was a kid I read one book, and after that it was Stephen King and Poe and all the other guys. So it’s been awhile since I became a horror fan. And I always wanted to make movies so it seemed like the perfect combination, to marry both, and it just happened that I was able to do it.

Tell me about the origins of Blood Cell. How did you come up with it?
A few years ago everybody wanted to get on the Internet, and I’d done at that time the re-shoots on The Messengers which was a Sam Raimi movie that he produced and The Pang Brothers directed. But they wanted to me shoot… a new ending and a new beginning.
So Sam Raimi saw my short film “Daughter” that I did and he wanted me to do the re-shoots. And after that everyone was really happy with what I’d done. And Sam wanted to generate content for cell phones and the Internet in Europe so he called me and asked, ‘Do you have any ideas?’ And I suggested something related to cell phones.
After I talked to them I was driving home, and my writer and I came up with the idea of [a killer] using cell phones to lure people to be his next victim, so it’s like a cycle where I call this girl and I make her call her friend and I use that girl to get the next one. I called him back right away, they were excited. I remember I wrote five pages, which was pretty much the entire series as it is right now, and that was going to become the first episode for the cell phone, but it never happened.
Then about a year after…  the company that I’m repped by, they created a company called 60 Frames and they were going to do content for the Internet, and they were like, ‘Hey, do you have anything?’ And I actually do have something because I wrote something a year ago for the same reason. And they really liked that so I just expanded that a little. I kind of just chopped the five pages in half so it was the beginning and then the end, and then I wrote whatever was in between.

What are the advantages and constraints of working within the webisode structure?
I don’t think there are that many constraints. You always have to deal with budgets. If you have $100 million you want to make a $200 million movie.
Actually I think you have a lot more freedom because, for one reason, the budget isn’t that big, no one’s risking a lot of money. And the other reason is I think the Internet allows you to do anything; you don’t have to use a formula, you don’t have to follow what’s done before. People can innovate on the Internet so I think it gives you a lot more freedom.
What was really exciting to me was writing the script because I knew that I had to have a cliff-hanger every four pages, so at the end of each episode people would want to see the next one. So that was a whole different game because I had written short films, I had written pictures, but I had never written anything like that. So it was kind of like a whole new experience because I had to write ‘okay, page four, I need to have a cliff-hanger here and I need to have one here.’ So it was interesting to have these mini-stories within the whole story.

You have a masked killer who sends cryptic text messages. What sort of horror villains influenced your creation of the bad man in Blood Cell?
You know, if they did, it was subconscious. I was always a fan of Jason from Friday the 13th. To me, he was the best out of all those guys. He didn’t talk. He’ll come and he’ll destroy you right away. So he didn’t waste any time.
For this guy it was more like… this was another thought when I was writing the series: nowadays you have all these cell phones and iPads, iPhones, i-whatever. And actually, when you talk to people, nobody listens to anyone and everybody interrupts you, and it’s crazy. You have all these devices to communicate, but I think communication between people has gotten worse or more complicated than when you didn’t have any of these tools.
So he’s using these things against people. If you would have listened the first time you made that call, maybe none of that would have happened to that girl. It’s kind of playing with that idea, but I don’t think I was consciously making any homage to any slasher.

Your star Jessica Rose rose to fame in another web series, lonelygirl15. Why did you cast her in this?
I cast her for two reasons. The first was it was actually a 60 Frames idea, like ‘look at this girl, she’s really good.’ Actually, by the time we had these conversations about Blood Cell, I had no idea about lonelygirl, I was very ignorant about that. They just said she’s a really good actress. So I went to the computer and watched all the episodes.
And the other reason was I met with her and she was super, super-cool. We had coffee here in L.A. She wasn’t thinking about ‘oh, well, I want to move on, I want to make features, I want to do this, I want to do that.’ She just wanted to keep acting and keep working, and to me that’s really important.

What is your next project? Do you plan to stay in the realm of horror?
The most fun time I’ve had has been working with horror so I’ve got to do horror, man.
Right now I’m developing a couple of movies, and I’m writing my own script. One is with After Dark (http://www.afterdarkfilms.com/); I’m developing a movie with those guys, hopefully to shoot this year. And I’m developing another film with Valhalla Films, and that’s Gale Anne Hurd.
And I’m developing my own script. I have to admit, I’m not the best writer in the world. I put it down because I need to get it out of my system.