{"id":37903,"date":"2026-01-30T06:00:01","date_gmt":"2026-01-30T06:00:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cnews.topnewsource.com\/?p=37903"},"modified":"2026-01-30T06:00:01","modified_gmt":"2026-01-30T06:00:01","slug":"even-with-the-18-day-schedule-sophie-turner-reveals-the-one-japanese-horror-film-she-analyzed-for-the-dreadful-and-why-onibaba-still-tops-her-all-time-favorites-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cnews.topnewsource.com\/?p=37903","title":{"rendered":"\u201cEven With the 18-Day Schedule.\u201d \u2014 Sophie Turner Reveals the One Japanese Horror Film She Analyzed for The Dreadful, and Why Onibaba Still Tops Her All-Time Favorites"},"content":{"rendered":"

When Sophie Turner<\/span><\/span><\/strong> reunited with Kit Harington<\/span><\/span><\/strong> for the 2025 gothic horror film The Dreadful<\/span><\/span><\/em>, audiences immediately fixated on the novelty: former on-screen siblings from Game of Thrones<\/em> now cast as lovers. But for Turner, the real challenge wasn\u2019t navigating internet discourse or awkward chemistry\u2014it was surviving an 18-day shoot designed to feel as brutal as the world it depicted.<\/span><\/p>\n

Set against the mud-soaked chaos of England\u2019s War of the Roses, The Dreadful<\/em> follows Anne (Turner) and her tyrannical mother-in-law Morwen (played by Marcia Gay Harden<\/span><\/span><\/strong>) as they cling to survival on the margins of a collapsing society. Turner wasn\u2019t just starring; she was also producing, which meant shaping the film\u2019s emotional and visual language under intense time pressure.<\/span><\/p>\n

Her primary reference point came from an unexpected place: Onibaba<\/span><\/span><\/strong>, the stark Japanese horror classic directed by Kaneto Shind\u014d<\/span><\/span><\/strong>.<\/span><\/p>\n

A Masterclass in Desperation<\/span><\/h3>\n

Turner has said that Onibaba<\/em> remains her all-time favorite horror film\u2014not for its scares, but for its philosophy. Set in a war-ravaged medieval Japan, the film follows peasants who murder soldiers to sell their armor for food. The parallels were immediate. Like Shind\u014d\u2019s characters, Anne and Morwen aren\u2019t villains or heroes\u2014they are survivors warped by scarcity.<\/span><\/p>\n

What fascinated Turner most was the film\u2019s moral framework. At its core, Onibaba<\/em> functions as a Shin Buddhist parable: a story about desire, jealousy, and how fear can deform the soul. The infamous demon mask isn\u2019t just an object of horror\u2014it\u2019s a manifestation of emotional rot. Turner used that idea as a blueprint to track the shifting power dynamic between Anne and her mother-in-law, where dominance constantly changes hands depending on hunger, fear, and sexual leverage.<\/span><\/p>\n

Turning Exhaustion into Performance<\/span><\/h3>\n

Directed by Natasha Kermani<\/span><\/span><\/strong>, The Dreadful<\/em> was shot in just 18 days in rain-soaked English locations. Turner leaned into the physical toll. The cold, the mud, the lack of comfort\u2014none of it was softened. Instead, she treated exhaustion as a performance tool, echoing the \u201canimalistic desperation\u201d she admired in Onibaba<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Harington\u2019s role as Jago, a man from Anne\u2019s past whose return destabilizes everything, further complicates the story. Turner has joked publicly about how \u201cvile\u201d it felt kissing someone she considers family, but both actors agreed the script\u2019s psychological depth outweighed the discomfort.<\/span><\/p>\n

Folk Horror with Teeth<\/span><\/h3>\n

Scheduled for release on February 20, 2026, via Lionsgate<\/span><\/span><\/strong> and True Brit Entertainment, The Dreadful<\/em> is already being positioned as a serious entry in modern folk horror. By grounding a medieval English nightmare in the moral horror of Onibaba<\/em>, Sophie Turner helped create a film where the true monsters aren\u2019t supernatural\u2014but human, hungry, and shaped by war.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When Sophie Turner reunited with Kit Harington for the 2025 gothic horror film The Dreadful, audiences immediately fixated on the novelty: former on-screen siblings from Game of Thrones now cast as lovers. But for Turner, the real challenge wasn\u2019t navigating internet discourse or awkward chemistry\u2014it was surviving an 18-day shoot designed to feel as brutal…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37903","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cnews.topnewsource.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37903","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cnews.topnewsource.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cnews.topnewsource.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cnews.topnewsource.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cnews.topnewsource.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=37903"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cnews.topnewsource.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37903\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cnews.topnewsource.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37903"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cnews.topnewsource.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37903"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cnews.topnewsource.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37903"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}