dark water Tagged Articles at Cinematical

When's the last time a short story scared the crap out of you? Japanese author Kôji Suzuki (of the original Dark Water and The Ring) seems to be aiming for as much. According to Dread Central, he has written "Drop," a setting-suitable novella that comes printed on rolls of toilet paper. Each roll comes with multiple copies of the story, so no need for cries of anguish when the tee-pee runs out before the twist is revealed.

But seriously, folks, before this metaphor gets too corny and starts to stink, what are some of your favorite short stories that were adapted successfully to the big screen? Can you name any that you think are ripe for a film version? I'm not sure if it's short enough to count, but I'm still waiting on Frank Darabont to give us Richard Bachman's Stephen King's The Long Walk, after doing a bang-up job on both The Mist and The Shawshank Redemption (and I guess The Green Mile counts too, being a serial and all).

One of my very favorite topics of film-related conversation would have to be that of the infamous "horror remake." Could be a J-horror re-imaganing, a revisit with truly classic material, or a quick-buck PG-13 junkpile that shames the name of its predecessor. (Heck, I posted a similar article last March, and I even went as far as to bang out a master list of horror remakes at my very own website!) Well, apparently the movie geeks over at Premiere.com are also big time horror nerds as well, because they've just posted their list of the 15 Best Horror Remakes.

OK, having just perused their 15 choices, I gotta say: I know it's got to be hard coming up with 15 really good horror remakes, but jeeeeez. Just lower it to a Top 10 and get The Fog, The Amityville Horror and 13 Ghosts OUTTA there. And ... am I on crack or did the Premiere squad neglect to mention Cronenberg's The Fly AND Carpenter's The Thing??? I mean, good job on throwing some love towards The Blob, Dark Water and the 1978 version of Body Snatchers, but come on! You guys omitted the two best horror remakes ever made!!!

(I'll include their full list after the jump, just to incite some discussion, but definitely check out the Premiere article before you dive in, you crazy gorehounds, you.)

The typically maverick filmmaker Lars von Trier is entering more common territory. Following the premiere of his latest "automavision" film, The Boss of it All, at the Copenhagen International Film Festival last Thursday, he announced plans to make a horror film called Antichrist. He didn't give anything away in terms of the plot, but did mention an affinity for Asian films like The Ring and Dark Water. He also said that it would be in English, will feature three main characters, and is likely to begin shooting next summer if financing goes as planned. He added that, "anything can happen in a horror film," suggesting that nothing about the project is definite. According to the report by ScreenDaily, producer Peter Aalbæk Jensen gave away too much plot info two years ago, prompting von Trier to completely rewrite the script and keep most of the details a secret from him.

Von Trier dabbled in horror a bit with his miniseries The Kingdom, which was recently remade for U.S. television by Stephen King, but it was more weird than scary (I know people who disagree with me there), and in that sense it shares with Asian horror the lack of slashing and hacking that is common with the American brand. I would prefer to see what the filmmaker would do with killings more than with hauntings, the latter being too permitting of free-form, surreal randomness, but hopefully he'll have something interesting to add to the genre no matter what he has in store.

As for Wasington, the third installment of von Trier's "America the Beautiful" trilogy (Dogville; Manderlay), which he previously said wouldn't happen, the film is not completely dead yet. He told reporters,"I'm quite sure it will happen one day," but says that right now it is an avoidable project.

In a collaboration that has horror fans drooling, zombie-king George A. Romero has agreed to both write and direct a screen version of Solitary Isle, a short story by Japanese writer Kôji Suzuki. Though Suzuki's name is nowhere near as familiar to western audiences as Romero's, the films (and remakes) based on his stories -- Dark Water and The Ring -- certainly are. Solitary Isle "chronicles an expedition to a deserted island that turns deadly as the explorers face an unknown force" and, shockingly, doesn't seem to have been made into a movie in Japan yet. Hurry George, hurry! Maybe you can actually make a Japanese horror story into something original in Hollywood!

The film is being produced through a collaboration between Hyde Park Entertainment and Kadokawa Pictures to the tune of about $25 million, and will likely be released domestically by Fox via their first-look deal with Hyde Park.

Last month, Scott told you about New Line's planned remake of the cult-classic Japanese film Battle Royale. It turns out that contrary to what was reported by our source, Variety, the studio has not completed acquiring the rights just yet. But otherwise the Americanized version is on its way toward production. So far, fans of the original are outraged at the idea and many people are baffled at how New Line is going to handle the violent story of a class of 9th graders who have to kill each other. Surely, they think New Line is going to screw it up by toning it down.

The New York Times talked with Roy Lee, who has produced remakes of the Asian films The Grudge, Dark Water, The Lake House and The Ring, and who is now producing Battle Royale, about the issues of the film's content and what we might expect from his version. It will take place in America (like all his remakes save for The Grudge) and will still be about high school students. Lee said that to tone down the story, he could make it so the students are in jail (or juvie?) at the beginning, but he sees that as pointless. He also assures that the film will be R-rated -- with a very hard R -- because the original would have received an NC-17 if released in the U.S. Finally he admits to being a huge fan of the original and has no intentions of ruining it with a bad film.

We can all breath easier now, right?. I mean, he must just not have been a huge fan of his other remakes, right? That's why they were bad films (okay, The Ring was okay). Personally, I'm still not assured that Lee will be able to appropriately handle the material over here.