KHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH. The first trailer for the new Sam Raimi-produced version of The Grudge is here, which means long hair, head massages, and extreme vocal fry are once again terrifying.
While franchise fatigue is certainly real, The Grudge looks like it could be a quality piece of horror film-making (at least from the two-and-a-half minutes of footage we can see in the trailer), more similar to the slow-burn indies being put out by A24 than a Hollywood reboot. This shouldn’t come as a surprise, considering its impressive horror pedigree: as we mentioned above, it’s produced by Sam Raimi, and the director is Nicolas Pesce, whose directorial debut was the very underrated black-and-white body horror The Eyes of My Mother. Plus, it stars Andrea Riseborough (alongside John Cho), co-star of Mandy, which is extremely metal and good.
The Grudge is technically neither a reboot nor a sequel. During a Q&A with Raimi, Riseborough, and some other stars at New York Comic-Con, Pesce said that all the Grudge movies are non-linear, just set in the same universe, and that this entry has a new story with new characters, as well as “odes to J-horror.”
Here’s the official synopsis, from IMDb:
After a young mother murders her family in her own house, a single mother and young detective tries to investigate and solve the case. Later, she discovers the house is cursed by a vengeful ghost that dooms those who enter it with a violent death. Now, she runs to save herself and her son from demonic spirits from the cursed house in her neighborhood.
The Grudge arrives in theaters January 3, 2020.
