New Poster For The Grudge Remake Is Absolutely Horrifying
Ready for a serious case of the heebie-jeebies?
Sony Pictures has released the first official poster for its upcoming remake/reboot/sequel The Grudge, and we sincerely hope that you're not about to jump in the shower. The one-sheet references an iconic scene from the 2004 film that has literally never stopped giving us the creeps.
In case you're not familiar, that flick — itself a remake of the 2002 Japanese film Ju-On: The Grudge — starred Sarah Michelle Gellar as Karen Davis, an American exchange student in Japan who moves into a house populated by malevolent spirits. These are no run-of-the-mill spooks, however; they're an extra-virulent variety created when one dies under extraordinarily emotional circumstances, and as the flick's title implies, they don't go away... ever.
In the scene in question, Karen is enjoying a nice, hot shower, and is in the middle of washing her hair when she suddenly appears to grow an extra hand... from the back of her head. It's an incredibly unnerving jump scare, and that the new flick's producers chose to invoke it for their movie's first poster tells us something about the specific vein of terror they're hoping to mine.
Sony / Screen Gems
Oh no, that's not horrifying at all. As the poster notes, Sam Raimi, who served as a producer on the 2004 film and the first of its two sequels, is back in that role for this go-round. He's got an interesting talent in the director's chair: Nicolas Pesce, who turned in low-key, slow-burn, minor masterpieces with 2016's Eyes of My Mother and 2018's Piercing.
What can we expect from the Grudge remake?
According to Pesce, his film will more than make good on this poster's promise to scare the absolute hell out of you. The director has explained that he views The Grudge as "an anthology series... [featuring] different characters, different stories, different locations, different ghosts," and while he is taking care to stay true to what came before, he promises that when it comes to the level of pure terror he's going for, audiences simply aren't ready.
Talking to the crowd at New York Comic-Con about the flick, Pesce said, "The movie's way more f****d up [than the other films in the series]. Not that the wave of J-Horror in the early 2000s wasn't f****d up — but this is really f****d up."
Pesce went on to explain that he rejects the "reboot" label, as his Grudge takes place in the same timeline as the 2004 movie, and that he is in no way simply telling a different version of the same story. "We're not rehashing [the first film]," he said. "We're finding the key elements that are just how the grudge expresses itself. So much of this movie is about the fact that this can happen anywhere and that it happens everywhere. It can spread like wildfire. Having certain touchstones was important. Obviously with a franchise we don't want to throw everything out. There is certain stuff that is fun for the fans to see again in a new context with a new spin." (via IndieWire)
The director also slip a few details about the flick's plot in a conversation with Entertainment Weekly. It will focus on a police officer (Andrea Riseborough, Mandy) who arrives in a new town only to be handed a bizarre and inexplicable case — one which leads her to investigate a mysterious house that, as Pesce describes it, "has been grudged."
"We follow her, as well as two other storylines, that are all interacting with this 'grudged' house in small town America," the director explained. "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."
That sounds really cool, but we're going to need a bit more confirmation on the movie's fright factor. Let's check in with horror legend Lin Shaye, who is also appearing in the film, and who had a few choice words when asked about the project in an interview with ComicBook.
"Wait until you see this. It's the scariest movie I've ever been a part of, not even maybe. Not even maybe," Shaye said, and you will note that she repeated that last part for emphasis. "It's the scariest part I've ever had, bar none... I'm very excited about it. The horror fans are going to go insane, that I can promise."
Okay, that's all we needed, we're officially on board. In addition to Riseborough and Shaye, The Grudge stars Betty Gilpin (GLOW), John Cho (Star Trek Beyond), William Sadler (Bill & Ted Face the Music), and Demian Bechir (The Nun); the flick will hit screens on January 3, 2020.