According to Variety, a film adaptation of the very creepy Japanese video game SIREN (known as FORBIDDEN SIREN over in Japan) has become a major hit over there, where it grossed $1.25 million in just 100 theatres in its opening weekend. In theory then, the film would have made $37.5 if it opened in 3000 theatres. Not too shabby.
Horror in general has been in a slump in Japan as of late, with Takashi Shimizu’s REINCARNATION winding with a disappointing $3.6 million total, for example. Toho (the distributor of SIREN) feels that its film could top out over $8 million, which is sort of ironic since the film deviates heavily from the video game in a Paul Anderson way (the game was strictly horror, whereas the film is more or less a ‘psychothriller’).
A couple months back, we told you that Sam Raimi and his Ghost House Pictures had secured the rights to do an adaptation of SIREN of their own, which my buddy Matt felt that it would be of the PG-13 variety. The Japanese version of the film revolves around a writer (played by Reo Morimoto) who travels to a remote island to live with his adult daughter and sick young son, where he is warned never to go outside when a certain siren sounds. Obviously, sound plays a big part in the film, which reportedly borrows the creepy claustrophobia of many J-horror films. For more info on the film, head over to its website here.