Scary And Smart

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Just now, grown-up horror is frightfully chic. The Village, which Shyamalan describes as "a Grimm fairy tale--Little Red Riding Hood, but an adult, dark version of it," creeps into theaters this week, followed by Open Water. Ju-on has opened in New York City and Los Angeles and spreads to a dozen cities next month. Soon we'll see an assault of Hollywood remakes of Japanese horror films. The Ring 2, a sequel to the 2002 Naomi Watts thriller that grossed $230 million worldwide, is being directed by Hideo Nakata, who helmed the original Japanese film version. A remake of Nakata's Dark Water, about a woman and her daughter drowning in sorrow and fear, will star Jennifer Connelly; Mechanic is the producer, and Walter Salles (Central Station) is the director. And Ju-on, Japan's top fright franchise (with four episodes) since The Ring, gets its Hollywood remake in October, with the original films' auteur, Takashi Shimizu, calling the shots and Sarah Michelle Gellar starring for producer Sam (Spider-Man) Raimi.

"Psychological or atmospheric horror is what's attracting audiences these days," says Roy Lee, the Korean American who sold The Ring and Ju-on to Hollywood. It attracts producers too, since atmospherics cost less than computer legerdemain. But you don't have to be Japanese to scare people smartly. You need only a potent idea and $200,000. That was the budget for Open Water, based on the true story of an American couple who were left behind on Australia's Great Barrier Reef by a scuba boat.

In the movie version, Daniel (Daniel Travis) and Susan (Blanchard Ryan) are on a Bahamas holiday when their dive boat leaves without them. A day and night in open water bring out all manner of monsters, not just sharks. And all manner of fears. As Susan says of the lurking creatures, "I don't know what's worse: seeing them or not seeing them." Just knowing the unknown may be near is dread enough.

"We absolutely did not set out to make a shark movie," says writer-director Chris Kentis, who shot the film with his wife, producer Laura Lau. "And we didn't set out to make a horror film." But it couldn't have been fun for the two leads. Travis and Ryan had to spend two days dangling in water surrounded by dozens of gray reef and bull sharks (and a few shark experts, who threw chunks of bloody tuna to the sharks to keep them nearby but not hungry). The mix of emotional intimacy and shark verite in this well-crafted indie effort makes for 80 minutes of aqua anguish.

"You have to credit M. Night Shyamalan for bringing horror back to the Hollywood mainstream," says Walter F. Parkes, the DreamWorks exec who produced the U.S. Ring movies and has optioned the Korean doomed-family epic The Tale of Two Sisters. "The Sixth Sense was beautifully shot, well written, with a mature approach to the genre." It also grossed $294 million at the North American box office. That number will scare up a lot of converts.