Crawl director Alexandre Aja has a new horror movie in the works: Elijah. The Searchlight Pictures film involves a young boy who invites a mysterious man into his house, which in turn results in “disturbing things.” Yeah, that’ll happen. The movie originated as a pitch from The Last Witch Hunter writer Cory Goodman, with Gregory Levasseur now handling the script.

Deadline broke the news on Elijah, the new horror movie from Crawl and The Hills Have Eyes director Alexandre Aja. The story “follows a young boy who invites a mysterious man into his home, believing the stranger to be the key to saving his sick mother. As increasingly disturbing things start to happen around his home, the boy soon realizes that the sinister stranger is not the savior he claims to be.”

How mysterious! What’s this stranger’s deal? Is he a vampire? That was my immediate thought, what with the whole “invited into the home” thing. But that’s just wild speculation on my part. Perhaps this stranger is a Wolfman, or even a Frankenstein. I’ll let the big shots in Hollywood figure this one out. David Goyer and Keith Levine of Phantom Four are producing the movie along with Adam Goldworm of Aperture Entertainment. Aja was recently announced as a director of a Quibi series based on the Japanese horror manga Tomie, but since Quibi is now dead and buried I’m guessing that project is dead, opening the door for Aja to jump into Elijah.

Aja’s credits include Crawl, The Hills Have Eyes, High Tension, Piranha 3D, Horns, The 9th Life of Louis Drax, and the upcoming O2, and if I’m being honest, I have to say that Crawl is the only movie he’s made that I genuinely liked from start to finish. I liked parts of Hills Have Eyes, High Tension, and Piranha, but in the end, none of those titles fully coalesced. Crawl, however, was genuinely fun monster movie entertainment – a B-movie that took itself seriously enough to make the entire thing worthwhile. With all that in mind, I’m cautiously optimistic about Elijah. One thing I’ll say: when Disney bought Fox I was worried that they might try to water down adult-driven movies through banners like Searchlight. But so far that hasn’t happened. The Disney-owned Searchlight has already released the great R-rated horror-comedy Ready or Not and they also have the R-rated Guillermo del Toro-produced, Scott Cooper-directed Antlers on the horizon.

The post ‘Elijah’: ‘Crawl’ Director Alexandre Aja Helming New Horror Movie For Searchlight Pictures appeared first on /Film.