Edmonton – If horror movies have taught us anything, it’s that sequels are bound to follow. And Tom Berry, the coproducer and cowriter of Decoys, the Ottawa-shot 2004 movie about teen alien body doubles, isn’t messing with that formula.

Budgeted at $2 million, the made-for-cable Decoys: Rebirth, which was to begin its three-week shoot in Edmonton on Feb. 13, reunites two of the original cast members while taking the storyline into new territory.

‘Making a sequel is tricky, because you want to recapture and go beyond at once,’ says exec producer Berry (Screamers, The Amityville Curse). ‘We wanted to take the Decoys mythology further, while maintaining the sophomoric humor.’

With Decoys: Rebirth, Corey Sevier, star of the first film, returns to play the graduate student now reeling over the loss of his friends. But a psychologist attempts to convince Sevier that he only imagined the events that unfolded in the first film, and that the alien conspiracy he feared is really just a figment of his paranoid imagination. Also reprising her role from the original is Kim Poirier.

The plot again involves randy young college men trying to bed gorgeous young college girls – not knowing that many of these babes are in fact alien clones.

Director Jeffery Lando (Alien Incursion) says much of preproduction was spent casting. ‘We had to find lots of stunning women to play alien decoys in the dorm,’ he says. ‘It was really tough, let me tell you.’

Lando says the film is ‘mainly a really fun, lively comedy. But there are scary bits, too. Directing horror is a lot of fun. You get to play with big emotions; you get to create jumps for the audience. What we’re doing here, really, is trying to amplify the original, to turn the volume up on the scares and the laughs.’ He adds that Decoys: Rebirth owes a lot to the sci-fi classic Invasion of the Body Snatchers, but calls it primarily a ‘cross between Animal House and Species.’

Filming in Alberta has meant using a great deal of local talent, Lando reports. Director of photography John Spooner (Intern Academy) is shooting the film, and a contest will determine which Alberta bands will play in one of Decoys: Rebirth’s key sequences.

While the original enjoyed a modest theatrical run, Decoys: Rebirth will air on The Movie Network, Movie Central and Space: The Imagination Station in Canada as well as the Sci-Fi Channel in the U.S.