Hollywood is busily remaking every movie released in the past 30 years, but they haven't totally abandoned one of their most time-honored traditions: remaking movies from elsewhere. Today Variety is reporting that commercials director David Alcade will make his feature debut at the helm of an English-language remake of French horror/thriller Them (Ils). He'll be stepping into the director's chair for StudioCanal and Nostromo Pictures.
Not to be mistaken for the classic atomic-age Them!, which chronicled the rise of giant, irradiated ants in the American Southwest... say, why don't they remake that? I'd sit through a Them! remake. Wait...where was I?
Oh, right. Them. No exclamation point. No giant ants. (Sigh.) Directed by David Moreau and Xavier Palud, the original French flick tells the story of a young teacher and her novelist husband who move into a remote, wooded estate. What seems like a restful new home becomes a place of nightmares when the couple is terrorized by hooded assailants over the course of one night.
If the premise sounds a lot like the 2008 home-invasion horror flick The Strangers, well, you wouldn't be the first person to think so. Similarities aside, hopefully the Them remake will turn out better than The Strangers, which received mostly poor reviews. Much of that will depend on who they hire to pen the script, whether they can bring anything new to a somewhat tired premise, and whether Alcade's chops can support a feature film.
To get a better feel for what might be coming our way in Them, here's the trailer for the American release of the original. You can also watch the full film on Netflix.
