Matt Reeves got put on the map with Cloverfield, solidified his name in the world of horror with his American-ized version of Let The Right One In, titled Let Me In, and now he’s continuing in the trend which so many other great modern directors follow, which is remake a classic story.
This one is slightly different, however, as Matt Reeves is set to do a new version of a classic Ray Nelson short, 8 O’Clock in the Morning, which was the inspiration behind John Carpenter’s 80’s classic They Live. So not a traditional 80s remake, but still a new take on a classic tale. Deadline has the story.
The story is about a man who awakens one morning with the crystal-clear realization that we are surrounded daily by the presence of aliens that are controlling society. It was owned by the studio because it was used as the basis for the 1988 Carpenter film They Live. In that film, aliens were discovered through the use of special glasses. None of that is being used here, and the film is not considered a remake.
“I saw an opportunity to do a movie that was very point-of-view driven, a psychological science fiction thriller that explores this guy’s nightmare,” Reeves told me. “There could be a desperate love story at the center of this. Carpenter took a satirical view of the material and the larger political implication that we’re being controlled. I am very drawn to the emotional side, the nightmare experience with the paranoia of Invasion of the Body Snatchers or a Roman Polanski-style film.”
Sadly, we probably won’t get the return of “Rowdy” Roddy Piper and his omniscient sunglasses, but Reeves is definitely a master of the “found footage” genre, and should be able to re-tell this story for a younger modern audience.
