The 44-year-old actress exclusively shares with ET all the details from her new thriller, out now!
Rose McGowan is about to be your new favorite "Ghost Buster."
ET exclusively caught up with the 44-year-old actress over the phone on Friday, where she gave us all the details on her new horror film, The Sound.
In the thriller, out now, McGowan plays Kelly Johansen, a writer that's best known for going on her own adventures in an effort to debunk myths about paranormal activity and prove on her blog, Tactile Sounds & Hallucinations, that "there's no such thing as ghosts."
Her latest lead begins when she receives a message from an unknown sender, revealing that they "saw something" in a haunted subway station in Toronto that's been closed down for years.
"What drew me to the role was just that she wasn't in a mini skirt," McGowan says of her character, laughing. "I really just like that she uses her mind. It's about that and it's not remotely about… there's nothing involved with being sexy. It's just something that goes deeper into psychological territory, which is kinda my preferred cinema to watch and be in."
"There was no, 'Let's try to keep pretty,'" she adds, referring to the fact that her character is pretty much in the same "ugly" outfit -- a simple T-shirt, jacket and boots -- throughout the film. "It was, 'Let's get dirtier and dirtier.'"
With little dialogue and appearing onscreen solo for the majority of the movie, McGowan had to rely on her emotions and facial expressions to deliver a performance that could captivate viewers from beginning to end.
"It was really interesting. I was just hoping it would all come together," she explains. "It's nice kinda being alone with your own head and it's certainly nice to not have to remember a lot of lines."
"It was really intense," she continues. "Especially the ending scene. I was discovered, I was never trying to be an actor, so I have no training. So, the secret behind that, I think, is just having the feelings there, right under the surface. What the audience feels is what I have to feel, and vice versa."
We won't spoil exactly what happens (you'll have to go see the film on your own!), but McGowan calling the end scene "intense" is on point. She says that particular scene was the most challenging to film because she had to dig deep to get there.
"This is a strange thing, but my grandmother died at a very early age," McGowan explains. "She actually fell off of a mountain, tragically, when she was hiking. For some reason, I tapped into what I felt like she was feeling when she was falling."
Although McGowan didn't have any ultra-spooky, real-life ghost stories of her own, she admits she's "been trying to meet a ghost" her entire life.
"I'm not joking," she says. "I will go to haunted places, things that are supposed to be haunted. I even, when I first took myself to New Orleans when I was 17, I was roaming around the cemeteries at night, just looking for something. I could never find it."
"But I'm hoping that they and vampires will appear to me shortly," she jokes. "I wouldn't ghost bust you [in real life]. I'd just wanna hang out with you!"
McGowan admits, however, that she does get a bit creeped out by the sound of her own voice on camera. She tells ET that she has yet to watch The Sound from beginning to end, but "will probably see it" only because of how proud she is of what writer-director Jenna Mattison did on set.
"I usually don't watch things that I'm in," McGowan says. "I have kinda a thing about it. Not on purpose, it's just strange to me. I hear my sister's voices coming out of my mouth. It's always been a very strange experience. Seeing yourself on a screen is abnormal. It's excruciating watching myself!"
But of course, she's hoping her fans will go see what The Sound is all about.
"You will be scared, but not in a grotesque way," McGowan teases. "You will be scared in an insidious way, that's going to worm its way through the mind."
"I think we could all use some relief right now," she adds. "And what better way than to go to another dimension?"