Sarah Michelle Gellar

Takashi Shimizu, director of the upcoming horror movie The Grudge, told SCI FI Wire that he embraced the chance to update his original Japanese supernatural horror film Ju-On, about a curse and a vengeful ghost. "When I did the original Japanese version of The Grudge I had no idea that it would be released in America," Shimizu said in an interview. "I only concentrated on what a Japanese audience gets scared of. For the American remake, I had to adjust my ideas for what is scary to American people. At the same time, the American producers said [the original version] is really scary and then decided to do the remake, so I believe that if they didn’t think the original version was scary then they wouldn’t have wanted to do the remake."

Shimizu directed the American-produced, English-language remake with American actors Sarah Michelle Gellar and Jason Behr, but shot it in Tokyo and included many of the original film’s Japanese actors.

Shimizu said that he trusted his own instincts about what is truly scary in his films, whether they are made for Japan or America. But he admitted that some minor changes had to be made. "I trust that the Japanese or Asian horror is going to be interpreted into the American [sensibility] well enough," the Japanese director said via an interpreter. "But at the same time, it’s crucial to adjust some parts for an American audience so that they will feel like the remake is really scary also." Regardless of these adjustments, Shimizu said that the differences won’t be significant. "There isn’t much difference between the American version and the Japanese version," he said. The Grudge is set to open Oct. 22.