Haunted houses and bedevilling spirits never quite seem to go out of fashion, even when the property market takes a tumble. The latest take on the ghost story is Voice from the Stone, which has just spooked Maggie Gyllenhaal into accepting the lead role.
Eric Howell is directing the thriller, which has been adapted from Silvio Raffo’s novel Le Voce Della Pietra.
Gyllenhaal will play a nurse who starts to realise that her young charge isn’t making up the stories of dark forces talking to him from within the walls of an old house in the Italian countryside. But instead of arranging to have him and his father move away from the malevolent entities, she does what anyone usually does in a horror movie – sticks around. Yes, while most people would run screaming, she decides to a) help the boy and b) start romancing his dad. Guess what happens? Yup: she becomes a target of the evil presence.
There’s no word on when the film will kick off shooting, but Gyllenhaal is already at work on school drama Still I Rise, and also just finished work on romantic comedy Hysteria, which details the accidental invention of the vibrator.