Give Hollywood a great idea for a movie and they will find 10 movies to make out of that single idea. All it takes is one film to make money rebooting another and all of a sudden we practically have a new genre of films dedicated to reboots. There are many people that feel that big studies are losing their appetite for new and exciting stories and would rather cash in on a sequel or reboot instead and sadly, that trend is often true.
And the genre that is the worst at doing this is arguably the horror genre, where studios spit out sequels and reboots all the time, almost in the hope that something might stick with audiences and the studio can land up with a cash cow for a few years. This doesn’t seem to be abating, and so we are stuck with more reboots (of remakes). This time a reboot of the US film adaptation of the classic Japanese horror series Ju-On, titled The Grudge.
The first Grudge, which starred Sarah Michelle Gellar as an exchange student who moves to Tokyo and gets tormented by spirits of the dead was itself playing on the success that Gore Verbinski had three years prior with The Ring in adapting a classic Japanese sci-fi story. While The Grudge was not nearly as successful as that film, it remained an incredibly creepy movie that scared enough people into warranting a few more sequels. Both of which were big steps down, with the third film of the series going straight to DVD.
This time around, it seems the studio, Ghost House Pictures, wants to avoid another sequel that could possibly sink even lower than that 3rd film and instead give us a reboot instead, because those always work (here’s looking at you The Mummy). A report from Deadline indicates the studio has also signed up Nicolas Pesce (The Eyes of My Mother) to write and direct the reboot for them that he hopes to have out for next year. Pesce is a brave pick considering he is still reasonably new in the industry, but that also means he has the opportunity to surprise, which is sometimes not a bad thing. Given the current state of horror reboots, however, I’m not putting expectations especially high.
Last Updated: July 10, 2017
