Andy Garcia (left) - in one of the scenes before he shaved off ‘that beard’ - is Dr Michael Hunter

Kartheiser, who plays Tommy, was a late addition to the cast of The Unsaid, after a series of searches in Los Angeles, Toronto, New York, Chicago and Vancouver had failed to come up with a young actor who, as producer Tom Berry puts it, could “play both a romantic lead and also be potentially violent, be a killer”.

The young actor, who hails from Minnesota - not far, in cultural terms, from the film’s Kansas setting - was suggested to Campbell by a friend and cast immediately. Kartheiser made his movie debut in Untamed Heart (1993) but, more recently, has marked out his territory playing edgy outcasts. What one reviewer called his “androgynous beauty” often in sharp contrast to his true self, notably in such indie flicks as Another Day in Paradise and Crime and Punishment in Suburbia. The same is true here.

Teri Polo (below) is his former student, Barbara

“There’s a close-up of Vincent’s eyes at a certain point, an extreme close-up,” says McLoughlin. “The way he looks, there’s something like an animal - like the way you talk about a shark’s eyes going dead before the kill.”

For all his background in horror movies, McLoughlin has, he says, always believed in working more closely with his actors than with anyone (or anything) else. “He’s one of the few acting directors,” agrees Kartheiser. “He’s really supportive and takes his time.”

McLoughlin is happy to field the compliment. “I work very hard at being an actor’s director,” he insists. “I have the highest regard for actors: it’s the toughest job.” But he stresses that this is more a necessary part of the directing equation, rather than a legacy of time he himself spent in front of the camera as an actor.

Vincent Kartheiser plays Tommy, the haunted teen whose case forces Hunter to deal with his own ghosts.

“My greatest mentor was Frank Capra,” he says. “He taught me so much about the human condition and the positive side of people. Capra once said to me, ‘It’s a people-to-people medium’. If you care about the people up there, you care about the film.

“My background has been doing a lot of humanistic stories as well as a lot of scary movies. In this kind of feature, you put that in sparingly - just enough so you can like the characters and enjoy being with them. Then, when all hell breaks loose, you’re with them.”