Major Game of Thrones reunion alert: Lionsgate just released the first trailer of the upcoming gothic horror film The Dreadful, which stars Sophie Turner and Kit Harington.
The trailer, below, gives fans a glimpse of a woman (Turner, fresh from her first look photo reveal as Lara Croft in Amazon’s Tomb Raider TV series) and her superstitious mother-in-law (Marcia Gay Harden) doing their best to survive in medieval England when a man she knows (Harington) returns from war without her husband, whom he fought alongside. The woman and her mother-in-law then take in another soldier who has returned home, only to murder him. As their relationship grows fraught, the woman’s desire to move on with the soldier her husband knew threatens everything.
Lionsgate also revealed an official synopsis alongside the trailer: “Set in medieval England, Anne and her domineering mother-in-law Morwen struggle to survive on the outskirts of society. But when a man from Anne’s past returns from war, a curse begins to take shape through a mysterious knight and threatens to destroy them all.”
If the plot seems a bit familiar, you’re not going crazy. In fact, The Dreadful is based on the iconic 1964 Japanese horror film Onibaba. It’ll be interesting to see if this film even holds a candle to that one, which is part of the Criterion Collection and widely regarded as one of the best Japanese horror films out there.
It’s such a beloved film that none other than Willem Dafoe, who counts the picture as one of his favorites, previously held the rights to remake the it — but he revealed during his Criterion Closet visit video that he couldn’t figure out a way to do it because “it’s so specific to its time.” He went on to say that every time he tried to “put a spin on it” he “ruined the source material.”
Turner previously revealed the inspiration for the film in an interview with Collider back in August 2025. “It’s based on the Onibaba, which is an amazing film from… I don’t even know what year it’s from, but 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 was written and directed by Natasha Kermani, who made horror films Lucky and Abraham’s Boys as well as a segment for V/H/S/85. The film is set to arrive in theaters on February 20.
Lex Briscuso is a film and television critic and a freelance entertainment writer for IGN. You can follow her on Twitter at @nikonamerica.
