First Look At THE GRUDGE Reboot and New Details Revealed
The classic Japanese horror-thriller The Grudge is getting a new reboot and thanks to Entertainment Weekly, we have our first look with two photos that have been shared. We also have new details on the film to share with you thanks to director Nicolas Pesce. While talking about the film, he reveals that it isn’t a remake of what’s previously been done with the franchise. This will tell a whole new story set in the same universe:
“The beauty of The Grudge franchise, both the American and Japanese iterations, is it’s an anthology series. Every movie is a different story of different characters having different interactions with this curse. In today’s age where we’re remaking everything, I thought it would be fun to dive into The Grudge universe where we don’t have to remake anything, but rather a new chapter in this canon.”
The filmmaker goes on to talk about what he finds most compelling about the concept of the grudge curse that all the stories have been set around:
“I think the most compelling thing about the grudge is that it’s inescapable. All you need to do is walk into a house that feels unassuming, and you’re screwed. It’s not your traditional haunted house movie where you pull up to a creepy, Gothic-looking house and go, ‘oh god that’s haunted.’ A motif of all the films, especially this one, is that behind the most normal kind of house, inside the most normal-seeming life, there can be something horrifying — whether it’s real and grounded, or something otherworldly and terrifying, it can happen anywhere, behind any door, to anyone. It’s unique to this story and philosophically terrifying.”
While I was initially unimpressed with the idea of another Grudge movie, I can see why Pesce wants to play around in that universe and tell a new story. Hopefully, that story ends up being a good and scary horror film worth watching.
This upcoming version of The Grudge is set in America and it’s said to take place at the same time as the 2004 film directed by Takashi Shimizu that starred Sarah Michelle Gellar, who played and exchange student living in Japan. In the new film, Andrea Riseborough (Mandy) “plays a cop in a new town who comes across a seemingly-unexplainable case that leads her to a house that, in Pesce’s words, ‘has been grudged.’” He goes on to explain:
“We follow her, as well as two other storylines, that are all interacting with this grudged house in small town America. Like the old films, it’s a tapestry of three different stories that interweave and all take place at slightly different times, centered around this one house that’s at the center of this case that this cop is working on.”
The film also stars Demián Bichir, John Cho, Betty Gilpin, Lin Shaye, and Jacki Weaver. The Grudge is set to hit theaters on Jan. 3, 2020 and is going to be rated R. Are you up for watching a new Grudge movie?