"The two people who end up facing the consequences are on either side of the fence and they're unbending. That's how I felt when I first read the script and how I still feel about it," Lindsey Haun, best known for her work on HBO's True Blood, offered as explanation of the ending twist of her latest feature, the pro-life horror film 'The Life one' which premiered Saturday night at the Hoboken International Film Festival.

"The woman who is completely pro-life and who never changes her opinion, and the woman who is pro-choice and never considers the other side, they're so pig-headed in their own views and not willing to debate, so they face the consequences," Haun, who plays pro-choice victim Staci Horowitz, concluded.

And that's one interpretation of the pro-life horror film, a passion project of its writer and producer, HIFF founder and NJ state senate candidate Kenneth del Vecchio. But it's the wrong one.

The Life Zone went viral across the internet Friday after blogs The Frisky and Talking Points Memo picked up on the film's trailer which focuses on three pregnant women who appear to have been kidnapped from abortion clinics and forced to see their pregnancies to term by their doctor and jailor. But despite garnering more than 20,000 hits on YouTube in the last four days, only fifty people - including the film's cast and producers - attended this weekend's screening, and even those who starred in the movie didn't know how to interpret its twist ending.

The plot as it played out: Three pregnant women wake up imprisoned in a hospital. Their only other contact is with their jailor - a mystery man played by Robert Loggia who occasionally appears on video to answer the women's questions and explain the consequences of their disobedience - and an obstetrician, actress Blanche Baker as Dr. Victoria Wise, who will deliver the captive women's babies whether or not their pro-choice views are changed.

The captive women are clothed in nightgowns and served warm milk and given opportunities to read books and watch movies explaining both sides of the abortion debate. Among the films is Del Vecchio's own 2009 feature, O.B.A.M. Nude, a satire of the Obama presidency.

As Dr. Wise explains it, "we'll have an abortion think tank over the next seven months."

The pregnant women are often tortured by dreams of death and despair - montages of swarming bees, swirling tornadoes and speeches by Hitler one night, African-Americans and foreigners shouting "abort me" in foreign tongues the next - while Dr. Wise experiences flashbacks to the dissolution of her marriage which fell apart when she learned she couldn't bear children. Her parents cursed her for not taking better care of her body, a poor diet, too much work, while her husband - The Karate Kid's bad sensei Martin Kove - divorces her, leaving her for a woman capable of having his children, a moment that pushes Dr. Wise to desperate measures.

Finally two of the three women come to accept human life exists inside them and less anxiously anticipate giving birth. But Staci still refuses to accept that the life inside her is anything more than a fetus. In her third trimester she attempts to injure herself and miscarry. It has unintended consequences.

All three women deliver and finally the first of the plot's twists are revealed. Staci, most opposed to pregnancy, is blessed with two children - twins - while her fellow captives only give birth to one baby each.

Later, Staci wakes up. The two new mothers are no longer captives, they've presumably ascended to heaven with their babies. It's revealed all along the women had been in Purgatory, after having died on the operating table of abortion clinics. But because Staci attempted to miscarry even after a second chance at motherhood, and because she never accepted the error of her ways until she experienced the physical joy of giving birth, of seeing her children for the first time, she will be doomed to eternity in Hell.

Loggia is Satan and he informs Staci she will spend all eternity in a cycle of pregnancy and childbirth and Dr. Wise will forever be her doctor, as the movie's final twist plays out: Wise too will spend eternity in Hell. She was so weak she committed suicide when her marriage collapsed and must suffer the fate of forever bringing life into the world, endlessly having to appreciate what she did not value on Earth.

"It was not a dramatic turn," Del Vecchio explained yesterday of the film's final moments - the triple-birth scene scored to a swelling crescendo which drowns out the revelation that Staci has given birth to twins along with the revelation of the doctor's suicide - all obscured by sound and editing issues director Rod Weber was still working to smooth out through the night. Del Vecchio explained The Life Zone is simply the classic straightforward story with a twist.

"It's like the Twilight Zone. Life, like pro-life; zone, like the Twilight Zone. And if you've seen Twilight Zone episodes, it punches you in the face in the end," Del Vecchio added, though he was quick to note he still felt the film's presentation of the issues was balanced. "I think the audience will walk away not knowing what the filmmaker's position is, it gives both sides of the coin."

But the filmmaker is no more shy about promoting his political positions in his films than he is promoting his films on the campaign trail. Del Vecchio's campaign website clearly states his belief abortion is mass murder, but before encountering his position statements, visitors to www.kenforsenate.com see a sidebar of trailers for his films as well as a campaign commercial featuring some of his films' stars, including pro-life actor Robert Loggia.

When we caught up with Loggia on the way out of the theater Saturday evening, he seemed to have a better sense of the plot than the campaign however. "I didn't know what the finished product would be," he admitted, all of his scenes shot in Los Angeles, apart from the main production in Brooklyn. "but it dealt with abortion and birth and it leaves you very challenged to find the proper attitude toward abortion."

Asked what prompted him to support Del Vecchio for State Senate and why he is in a campaign commercial for the Republican candidate, a confused Loggia suddenly experienced a plot twist of his own. "I don't know, I am?"

Watch a trailer for "The Life Zone."



View Loggia's campaign ad: