After its success with the My Super Psycho Sweet 16 slasher flicks, MTV goes for more psychological tension in its latest original movie, The Truth Below (premiering Sunday, June 16 at 10 p.m. ET/PT). Yet the man who helmed it made his name with a stalker opus: Scott Glosserman, who won raves for his debut feature Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon a few years back and spoke exclusively with Fango about his new opus.

Forgoing Mask’s satirical approach, Glosserman aims for screws-tightening suspense with Truth’s study of four young people under pressure. Jenna (90210’s Gillian Zinser), Ethan (Reid Ewing), Dante (Nick Thurston) and Liam (Ricky Mabe) are a college-age quartet heading home from a snowboarding vacation when their car goes off a mountain road and winds up buried in the snow. Unable to free themselves or the vehicle, they decide to play a game in which they share secrets from their pasts, slowly revealing dark sides and threatening each other’s ever-dwindling hopes of survival…

FANG: How about selecting your cast? Was there any particular quality you were looking for during the auditions?
GLOSSERMAN: Before I sort of married myself to particular looks or intricacies or physical movements, I wanted to make sure I cast incredibly intelligent actors, who were confident in their own choices and their own skills. Being in such a confined space, there’s so much emotion in there, and so many things that needed to be conveyed with very little movement. And I also wanted to connect with the MTV audience, which is younger than me—but I knew my cast was going to be a lot more familiar with them. And some of the preconceptions I had about my cast, about my characters, some of the archetypes and most importantly about Gillian’s role, Jenna, got overturned. Gillian and I had some amazing, unbelievable talks about her philosophy, about pop culture, about women and young people and femininity and sexuality. And they informed my directorial decisions as much as I informed hers, and the other actors’.

The cast was spectacular. They were all anxious to do something different. Gillian’s role is completely different from the one she plays on 90210, and she really stepped up to the occasion. Reid Ewing also goes completely against type from what he plays on Modern Family, and I think people will be amazed at his performance. They all brought it; Ricky Mabe has been in the game for a long time, a lot longer than many others, and he brought a real even-keeled, professional quality to the cast. He was a real great anchor for everybody. And Nick Thurston’s a movie star; he’s incredibly charismatic and bright. All of them were so prepared, so professional, so talented, and it just made my life as a director that much easier. The other thing is, we were all friends, we were all a big happy family, especially given that we were in a confined space for such a long time, and we all got along tremendously. That really helped too.