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MADISON — “Friday the 13th” had Jason. Freddy ruled in “A Nightmare on Elm Street.” And in “Halloween,” it was Michael Myers who tortured Jamie Lee Curtis.

But “Hellphone,” an independent movie by two Greensboro filmmakers, presents an atypical antagonist: a cell phone.

Yes, that gadget glued to most people’s ears nowadays is possessed by a demon in this film, and it wreaks havoc on a small town that happens to be in Rockingham County.

The movie will be filmed in Madison and Mayodan beginning this weekend. Filming is expected to take several weeks, with a DVD release scheduled for February.

Filmmakers Jason Marc Pierce and Stephen van Vuuren say they will showcase some of Rockingham County’s tourist attractions.

“It’s a really rich place for telling stories,” said Pierce, the director.

The movie brings a little creativity to the genre. As Pierce developed the plot more than three years ago, he realized no one had made a film in which a phone, of all things, played the terrorizing lead role.

It didn’t take much to get van Vuuren involved. “I hate my cell phone,” he said.

“Hellphone” was born.

With a title and plot in hand, Pierce and van Vuuren set out on their search for the quintessential small town. Rebecca Clark, director of the Piedmont Triad Film Commission, led them to western Rockingham.

She connected them with local leaders in Madison and Mayodan, who the filmmakers said have welcomed them with open arms.

“They’re very excited, and we’re very excited to work with them as well,” Pierce said.

Pierce, who is also a singer and guitarist, has performed at Madison’s Dan River Coffee House. The audience can expect to see it and other downtown spots featured in the film, he said.

“Hellphone” is the duo’s first feature film, and it’s been a long time coming. Pierce and van Vuuren got sidetracked in the computer business before dedicating themselves full time to film.

Pierce was active in high school theater while growing up in Pennsylvania but found filmmaking to be an expensive.

By the time he moved to Greensboro in 2000, the digital revolution was in full swing, he said. “All of a sudden it was really easy to make a movie.”

About the same time he met van Vuuren, a native of Johannesburg, South Africa, who had wanted to put his photography skills to use in movies ever since seeing Stanley Kubrick’s “2001” for the first time in the mid-1980s.

As for the future, Pierce and van Vuuren are thinking big but local. Any success and money “Hellphone” generates will be used to grow a film business in the Piedmont Triad, van Vuuren said. “We actually have a slate of four to five films that we’d like to see happen after this.”

As for Pierce, making movies sure beats repairing computers, and it has made him happy he didn’t fall back on his alternate career choice: to become a Franciscan priest.

“Filmmaking is a blast,” he said.

Contact Jonnelle Davis at 627-4881, Ext. 126, or jonnelle.davis@news-record.com