Before he cut up teenagers in remakes of classic horror films, Marcus Nispel cut his teeth on commercials. More than 1,000 commercials, actually, including the award-winning “A Time Has Come Today” bit for Fidelity Investments, which earned Nispel a spot in Time Magazine’s year-end “Best of 1996” issue. Since then, he’s won far fewer awards, and has earned a reputation as The Guy Who Directs Remakes No One Wants.
Nispel’s resume may be festooned with some great music videos, but for the last decade he’s exclusively worked on some not-so-great remakes. In fact, all of his films released to date have been remakes: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003), which helped catalyze the horror-remake contagion that we’ve yet to kill; Frankenstein (2004), a made-for-TV adaptation of Dean Koontz’ books; Pathfinder (2007), which loosely reworks an Oscar-nominated 1987 Norwegian film; Friday The 13th (2009), a reboot that conflates the first three films in the Reagan-era slasher franchise; and Conan (2011), a remake of the Arnold Schwarzenegger pulp classic.
Now Nispel, rocking a mighty beard, has set his sights on more original material. The Hollywood Reporter confirms that Nispel will be writing and directing an original film called Stowaway, produced by L.A.-based White Sands Pictures. Based on a Nordic myth of a “seaborne humanoid avenging creature” (so, like an ancient, aquatic C.H.U.D.?), Nispel’s film tells the story of a woman who marries into the perfect family and sets sail on the high seas, only to discover some insidious secret dwelling at the bottom of the sea, somewhere between the bump on the log and Davy Jones’ locker.
FX specialist Mike Elizalde of SpectralMotion will create the creature, which is sweet news: Elizalde has worked on Gremlins 2, Hellboy, Men in Black, and Nutty Professor II, which, for all its fart jokes and rampant silliness, features some great make-up effects.
Though Nispel has yet to direct what we in the critical community would call a “good movie,” he has undeniably displayed a pretty good eye, and good feel, for fun horror. His Texas Chainsaw Massacre may not be Tobe Hooper’s grueling black-comedy classic, but it certainly isn’t a boring retread. It looks better than it has any right to, packs a couple decent scares, and doesn’t hold back, like so many horror films of the pre-Saw PG-13-laden 2000s. Nispel’s Friday The 13th is similarly good-looking, if devoid of scares, but it knows what it is: bloody, sexy, silly fun.
Nispel has another fun-sounding original film, Exeter (formerly called Backmask), coming out soon. The first film he ever wrote himself, it concerns a group of teenagers having a party—as teenagers are wont to do—and decide to play a vinyl record backwards, which releases an evil spirit that subsequently possesses them. It almost sounds like a less-grim, less artsy Lords Of Salem.