While the J-horror craze is all but dead here in 2019, next year’s Grudge will be returning one of the most popular and iconic properties back to the big screen in the U.S., and hopefully making more of a splash with fans than Rings did back in 2017.
In a new chat with Entertainment Weekly, director Nicolas Pesce (The Eyes of My Mother) promises that is film is unlike movies of the past.
“It’s a very different take on The Grudge than you know it from the past,” Pesce told EW. “I think that horror audiences these days are looking for a much more grounded, much more realistic, much more character-driven story in their horror movies. We see what’s doing well now and it is these kind of smarter, more nuanced horror stories, and that’s what this is going to be. We’re trying to update it for contemporary sensibilities, and we have an unbelievable cast, and I think it’s going to be something very different.”
Pesce continues, “The movie is set up a lot more like Seven, that sort of movie. There’s a cop drama that drives the whole thing, and Andrea [Riseborough] is the lead detective on this new case that they’ve come upon, and is the driving force through the movie. She’s incredible.”
The film stars horror legend Lin Shaye, Andrea Riseborough, Demian Bichir (The Nun), and John Cho (“The Exorcist”), as well as Betty Gilpin (“Glow”), William Sadler (The Mist), Jacki Weaver and Frankie Faison.
Based on a script by Jeff Buhler (The Midnight Meat Train, Pet Sematary), Grudge is produced by Sam Raimi and Rob Tapert for Ghost House with Nathan Kahane and Erin Westerman executive producing for Good Universe. Schuyler Weiss, Roy Lee, Doug Davison, John Middleton, and Andrew Pfeffer also produce.
Grudge arrives in theaters on January 3rd, 2020.