Sam Raimi working on two Euro-horror remakes

A scene from Room 205
A scene from Room 205

Sam Raimi’s Ghost House Pictures has nabbed remake rights to two horrors, the 1987 Spanish screamer Anguish (Angustia) and the 2007 Danish shocker Room 205 (Kollegiet), which will be renamed The Dorm, according to Empire Magazine.

Anguish will remake a Bigas Luna (A Tale of Ham and Passion, Poodle, Golden Balls) horror of the same name, with a film-within-a-film style that tells the story of an agressive optician’s assistant who loses his job and goes on a killing spree. But the real plot concerns the patrons of a small cinema who are watching the film when a killer starts to murder them in ways that mirror the film’s plot. In the remake, the protagonists are two girls who find real life mirroring the horror film they’re watching.

The Dorm is a remake of Room 205, originally directed by Martin Barnewitz, and revolves around a student who finds her college dorm room at a college in Copenhagen, haunted, and some of her neighbours dying under suspicious circumstances. She has to find a way to appease the angry ghost of a former resident, that may be at the bottom of the mystery, before anyone else dies.

Anguish is being adapted by When A Stranger Calls’ Jake Wade Wall, and The Dorm will be penned by Stephen Susco (The Grudge) and helmed by Barnewitz, director of the original film.

The Raimi-directed horror Drag Me To Hell is due out in theaters on May 29, 2009. Below is a nasty pic I found from that film.

Lorna Raver in Drag Me to Hell
Lorna Raver in Drag Me to Hell

Below is a trailer for the original Room 205.

And below is a rare clip from the original Anguish, featuring Michael Lerner as the killer, and Zelda Rubinstein as his mother.

You can visit the website for the original Room 205 at www.kollegiet.net.