The man who made us want to own a mogwai for a pet more than anything in the world will soon be making another film, only it sounds much less cuddly. (Also much less likely to turn into murderous gremlins, but hey, you take your chances.) Variety reports Joe Dante is set to film Labirintus, a supernatural thriller that, at least on the surface, sounds much more in the actual horror vein than a lot of his work, which tends to lean as much deranged comedy as anything. It sounds intriguing, though, so we’ll just provide the entire description:
Labirintus tells the story of a paranormal investigator and psychiatric researcher, who join forces to explore an abandoned subterranean Soviet research facility, hidden within Hungary’s Budapest Labyrinth, the dark twisting catacombs beneath Buda Castle. When supernatural forces confound and torment the group, they begin to question their own sanity. To escape they must quash their fears and lead their team to find and destroy the dark heart of the maze.
This is the kind of thing that nowadays would usually have the foreboding “found footage” format attached to it, and look resolutely ugly. Hopefully, Dante’s influence will go a long way toward making it a more idiosyncratic project. Actually, since Dante’s involved, that’s probably a guarantee. And sure, this isn’t that vampire and werewolves film he’s been working on for awhile, but he did recently tell us that Labirintus might be the next one. So really, the fact that a plan to make a movie actually worked out as anticipated is the biggest surprise of all. Ten bucks says every time Dante films someone walking down one of those dark catacombs, he’ll have to resist the urge to call for a pratfall.