September 6, 2016

Here at Blumhouse.com, I give a lot of love to the cinema that’s been coming out of South Korea. It’s been the market where you can find some of the most unique, intriguing and dramatically terrifying stories. I’ve made my recommendations in previous articles both here and here, but the crown jewel to emerge in the last decade has to be Kim Jee-woon’s revenge masterpiece I SAW THE DEVIL.

Kim Jee-woon made one American film, the Arnold Schwarzenegger fronted THE LAST STAND in 2013, but has a great filmography of other Korean films such as THE GOOD THE BAD THE WEIRD, A BITTERSWEET LIFE and A TALE OF TWO SISTERS, which was remade into 2009’s THE UNINVITED. It was inevitable that another one of his films would eventually be remade for American audiences and word last year was that writing/directing/producing team Simon Barrett, Adam Wingard and Keith Calder secured the remake rights.

Barrett was on this week’s episode of the Shock Waves podcast talking about everything from his working relationship with Wingard, to the V/H/S films, to why they chose to make the new BLAIR WITCH movie. I couldn’t help but inquire about the status of the I SAW THE DEVIL remake.

“We are still doing it,” he confirmed on the show. “We’re for sure going to make that movie. I suspect it will actually be the next film that Adam and I collaborate on as writer / director the way that we have. I suspect that’ll be our next project, assuming all goes well. But it’s looking pretty good. Everyone’s happy with the script. So we’re moving forward with that. I’m really excited about that project. I think we have a really cool take on it.”

When I mentioned how previous American adaptations of Korean films haven’t successfully translated, he explained the motivations behind their version of I SAW THE DEVIL. “I, obviously, love the original film. But I also really love OLDBOY and I wouldn’t have remade OLDBOY. But I will remake I SAW THE DEVIL, and the reason for that is I feel like on one hand, both films are perfect, but OLDBOY has a premise that to me is very Korean, and very specific, and what that film does, it does just absolutely well in every respect. There’s no better way, or different way to tell that story. Whereas, I SAW THE DEVIL, not only is a great movie, but has a great premise that you can totally take, in my opinion, in a totally different and interesting direction.”

“What we pitched to Kim Jee-woon, was how much we loved the original, and how much respect we had for the original, and how we’re designing a film that’s going to be different and they’re both going to co-exist,” Barrett elaborated. “We’re not going to do a shot-for-shot remake of I SAW THE DEVIL, because that’s not creatively interesting to either of us. In some ways, it’s going to be a very different film. That might outrage people, but I think that’s the more interesting, creative approach to me. Because otherwise why do it? To me, the most interesting remake materials are movies that have a great hook that you can do something different with. And go in a different direction. The trifecta that always gets referenced is John Carpenter’s THE THING, David Cronenberg’s THE FLY and Chuck Russell’s THE BLOB.”

“When I first saw I SAW THE DEVIL, it completely blew me away. Immediately my brain started ticking about that ending. It wasn’t where I expected it to go, and I started creatively chewing on it. It was a film we’d always talk about. Kind of like a dream remake. Again, not because we feel the original does anything wrong, but because we have a different, creative vision for that film that can co-exist happily with it. That’s my approach to remakes. I’d only want to remake a film if I had something different and new to say with that story. I think fans of the original are going to be surprised by our remake, but I think they’ll also really like it.”

You can listen to the entire interview where we also talk about YOU’RE NEXT, THE GUEST, A HORRIBLE WAY TO DIE and much more embedded below for your convenience! The bit about I SAW THE DEVIL comes in at around the 1 hour, 50 minute mark.