Movies
Raimi’s Ghost House Preps Two More Remakes
Their track record isn’t all that impressive as Sam Raimi’s Ghost House Pictures has brought us multiple Boogeyman, Grudge and Messengers films, along with a bunch of other disappointing direct-to-disc films. While 30 Days of Night was a pretty solid flick, Sam Raimi has proven he’s still a master of horror with his upcoming Drag Me to Hell, which makes me wonder how much input he’s really giving to these films. Either way, Ghost House has announced two more horror remakes, one of which was already revealed here on Bloody-Disgusting a year and a half ago. Read on for the story.
Sam Raimi’s Ghost House Pictures is remaking a pair of European horror films.
First up is Anguish, a remake of the 1987 Spanish pic that was written and directed by Bigas Luna. The company behind such horror hits as The Grudge films has also acquired the remake rights to the Danish movie Room 205 (trailer), which was first reported on Bloody Disgusting back in October of 2007.
Anguish follows two girls who, while watching a scary movie, find themselves in a horror film of their own when their life starts to mirror the pic’s plot.
Jake Wade Wall (When a Stranger Calls, Amusement, The Hitcher) penned the screenplay.
Ghost House’s Raimi and Rob Tapert are producing Anguish alongside Vertigo Entertainment’s Roy Lee and Doug Davison (The Strangers). Ghost House and Vertigo previously worked together on The Grudge and The Grudge 2. Mandate Pictures’ Nathan Kahane and Vertigo’s Sonny Mallhi will exec produce, and George Ayoub will co-produce.
Ghost House has tapped Room 205 director Martin Barnewitz to helm the English-language remake, which is being redubbed The Dorm.
The story centers on a college freshman who moves into a dorm only to find that her room is haunted by sinister forces. Stephen Susco, who wrote The Grudge and The Grudge 2, is adapting.
Raimi and Rob Tapert will produce The Dorm, and Kahane will exec produce.
Pictured: ROOM 205
The trailer for Ti West’s upcoming adaptation of A Christmas Carol raised a lot of eyebrows when it dropped earlier this week. While plenty of folks initially dismissed Ebenezer as a derivative project meant to cash in on the recent wave of unnecessary prequels that expand the backstory of beloved characters (such as 2023’s Wonka), Charles Dickens’ original novel already made a point of exploring Ebenezer Scrooge’s origins in detail – meaning that this new film is likely just a particularly faithful adaptation of the source material under a different name.
Couple that with the fact that the movie is being helmed by a genuine horror auteur and I think it’s safe to say that the latest iteration of the first modern ghost story is in good hands.
That being said, one detail that immediately jumped out at me during the brief teaser (other than a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it nod to Johnny Depp’s iconic bedroom death scene from the original A Nightmare on Elm Street) is the fact that many of Ebenezer’s ghosts appear to have been directly lifted from the iconic John Leech illustrations that accompanied the first edition of Dickens’ novel.
Here are a couple of stills from the trailer compared to the original artwork:
The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come in ‘Ebenezer’ and ‘A Christmas Carol’
The Phantoms in ‘A Christmas Carol’ and ‘Ebenezer’
Marley’s Ghost in ‘Ebenezer’ and ‘A Christmas Carol’
Mainly working with old-school wood and steel engravings that would later be transferred to print, Leech was instrumental in crafting the iconic look of history’s most influential phantoms – especially since Dickens is said to have been deeply involved with the creation of these so-called “comic illustrations.”
And since the novel is commonly said to have popularized spiritualism in Victorian England, much of the ghostly iconography that we still see in genre media to this very day (including some of Ti West’s previous films) can be traced back to the author’s partnership with Leech.
Ebenezer won’t be the first A Christmas Carol adaptation to borrow heavily from these designs, but I can appreciate how Ti West is incorporating an important part of horror history into his latest film.
Ebenezer will be available in theaters starting November 13.
You must be logged in to post a comment.