NYCC 2019: The Grudge remake will be more disturbing than the original
The first footage of The Grudge remake dropped at New York Comic-Con this weekend, and it appears the film will be even more disturbing than the original.
We live in an era of reboots and remakes, so it’s not entirely surprising that the early-2000s horror hit, The Grudge, is on the list of films getting revamped over the next year or so. What is interesting, however, is that the film seems to be taking on the original story with a new perspective — one that’s not only more Westernized, but also seems to be darker and more psychologically disturbing than its predecessor.
At The Grudge panel at New York Comic-Con this weekend, fans got a first look at the movie — and from what we got to see, it looks intense. The opening clip shows a detective entering the home of an elderly woman for an investigation — and quickly picking up on the fact that something is very, very wrong in this house. Not only does the woman, whose hand is burnt and disfigured, begin screaming for help, but the corpse of her husband sits in the chair in the living room. And given how long it’s been there, it’s not a pretty sight…
The second clip flashes back to Jackie Weaver’s character checking in on the same elderly woman, only years prior to the first clip. She comes to discover her dead husband on the floor with a fork sticking out of his neck, along with the fact that this woman is chopping her own fingers off… seemingly without even noticing. The laughter that emerges from her afterward is what truly makes this scene eerie, and that only seems to be the beginning of this character’s struggle with the Grudge.
But it’s not just the footage from the new Grudge movie that has us on the edges of our seats. The stars involved with the project also sat down to discuss the upcoming film, and their sentiments echoed our own after watching the clips: This take on The Grudge is unlike any we’ve seen before.
Among the panelists on Thursday afternoon were producer Sam Raimi, director Nicolas Pesce, and stars Andrea Riseborough, Betty Gilpin, and Lin Shaye. Not only did Shaye and Riseborough confirm that this film terrified even them, but Raimi went on to tell the audience that, in comparison to the original movie, “this is way more f*cked up.”
Part of this more-disturbing atmosphere comes from the fact that this rendition of The Grudge will be rated R, something that the panelists were thrilled to share with fans on Thursday. But the R rating isn’t the only thing that sets this movie apart from the first one: According to Pesce, it also deals with “dark subject matter.”
The producer and director also emphasized that, while they wanted to keep this movie somewhat similar to the original, they also wanted to highlight how different things would be in this new American setting. The Grudge is all about ghosts seeking vengeance after dying in a rage, and that sort of storyline would obviously differ depending on the victim’s cultural background.
Still, the footage did end on one familiar note: with the signature Grudge noise playing, signaling the ghost’s presence. And if that didn’t get fans excited for the upcoming remake, nothing will.
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