Key Points
- Sophie Turner and Kit Harington reunite in ‘The Dreadful,’ set in 15th-century England.
- The film is inspired by the 1964 Japanese horror classic ‘Onibaba.’
- Playing lovers was awkward for the actors given their sibling roles in ‘Game of Thrones.’
Two Game of Thrones stars are reuniting, but they’re not in Westeros anymore. Instead, Sophie Turner and Kit Harington are playing Medieval English peasants in an upcoming movie based on an acclaimed Japanese horror movie from the 1960s.
In The Dreadful, which hits theaters and VOD on February 20, Turner plays a young woman living in England in the 15th century during a War of the Roses, an era when the country was torn apart and at odds with each other. She’s living in a fairly remote part of the country with her mother-in-law (Marcia Gay Harden), but their meager existence gets complicated when Harington’s character, who used to live in the area, returns from war. Before long, a curse involving a spooky night further complicates things in this gothic horror. Entertainment Weekly published first-look photos of the movie on Tuesday.
The film’s plot is based on Onibaba, a 1964 Japanese folk horror movie about a young woman and her mother-in-law living in 14th-century Japan when wars amongst samurai have torn the land apart. Set almost entirely in a swamp amidst tall grass that sways in the wind, Onibaba is an extremely cool-looking and haunting film. It’s widely regarded as a horror classic, and Willem DaFoe considers Onibaba to be his favorite film. It remains to be seen what aspects of the movie that are specific to Japanese history and culture will need to be altered for the English-set The Dreadful.
“I can tell you that it’s based on Onibaba, which is an amazing film,” Turner told Collider. “it is loosely based around that. I would say it’s a bit like The Green Knight. It’s kind of supernatural and weird and really scary.”
The Dreadful is written and directed by Natasha Kermani, an Iranian-American filmmaker who previously made Abraham’s Boys and Lucky.
Sophie Turner and Kit Harington, Who Played Siblings on Game of Thrones, Had to Kiss in The Dreadful
It’s a welcome—if slightly uncomfortable—reunion for Turner and Harington, who played Sansa Stark and Jon Snow on HBO’s massively popular fantasy series. On that show, they were half-siblings; in The Dreadful, they’re lovers. Given that they’d spent so much time playing family members, this was tough.
We get on set, and it’s the first kissing scene, and we are both retching,” Turner recalled during an interview with Seth Meyers on Late Night.
“Like, really, it is vile. It was the worst. Another really bad moment in my career,” she joked.
In an interview with E! News, Harington confirmed that it was a little weird, explaining that it was Turner who sent the script to him without realizing the implications.
“[Turner] was one that sent that movie to me and somehow didn’t see what I saw in it,” he said. “I was like, ‘These guys, these are lovers, right?’ And I felt very odd about that. But it was a good chance to be with her again and work together.”
Considering the big twist in Game of Thrones—a show that was full of incest—involved Harington’s character sleeping with someone he didn’t realize was actually his aunt, whatever they did filming The Dreadful is probably fine.
The Dreadful premieres in theaters and on demand on February 20.
About the author
James Grebey is a journalist and editor based in Los Angeles. He has more than a decade of experience covering entertainment and pop culture at outlets like Vulture, Inverse, SYFY WIRE, Vulture, and TIME.
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