The Grudge is one of those impenetrable horror franchises that never really goes away. Like The Conjuring and The Ring, the title alone is enough of a draw that we get a new one of these things every few years. Now, as 2020 approaches, there’s another version of The Grudge on the horizon and honestly? We weren’t sure what to make of a reboot, but this new red band trailer might change our minds. This film looks terrifying!
As you can see, the trailer took a page out of a recent promo for It Chapter Two. Basically, it shows an entire scene of a young woman confronting an older, creepy woman in her disheveled home. In It, it was Jessica Chastain, and here it’s Andrea Riseborough. The older woman approaches Riseborough with her hand in her mouth, asking if she’ll feed her. If that wasn’t weird enough, it quickly becomes apparent that there’s someone—or something—else in the house. Maybe a few somethings.
Oh yeah, the woman is also missing a row of fingers on one of her hands and is covered in some sort of mucky, bloody substance. You know, just girly things.
If you’re unfamiliar, The Grudge franchise kicked off back in 2002 with the Japanese horror film Ju-On: The Grudge. It got an American remake (starring Sarah Michelle Gellar) in 2004, which made bank after the success of another Stateside Japanese remake, The Ring. The Americanized version of The Grudge spawned several sequels, but the 2020 version seems to be doing its own thing. It’s a reboot, not a remake, and has a whole new plot loosely associated with the other films.
This Grudge was written and directed by Nicolas Pesce (Eyes of My Mother) and is produced by horror legend Sam Raimi, of Evil Dead fame. In addition to Riseborough, it boasts a pretty all-star cast: Glow’s Betty Gilpin, Demián Bichir, Jacki Weaver, John Cho, and Lin Shaye (who plays the old woman in the trailer and who you might recognize from other horror franchises like Ouija and Insidious).
Here’s a quick, official synopsis of the plot:
A single mother and young detective, Muldoon (Andrea Riseborough), discovers that a suburban 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.
That sounds like The Grudge, alright. But how will this one be different than the others? And why was a reboot even necessary in the first place? We won’t yet know if we’ll even see characters commonly associated with the franchise, like Kayako and Toshio. We do know that this one is retaining that creepy imagery of fingers coming out of someone’s head in the shower. And there’s the whole familiar haunted house element, too.
We’re excited to check this one out to see if it earns its stripes. Who knows? Maybe it’ll be a Halloween-style success and spawn even more Grudge movies. You can see for yourself when Nicolas Pesce’s The Grudge hits theaters on January 3, 2020.
Featured Image: Screen Gems
