For fans of the movie Drive it may not sound like such a stretch, but director Nicholas Winding Refn’s next feature is looking to be a horror film. Deadline is reporting that the director is in talks with Sony to direct The Bringing, a haunting film, kinda sorta based on true events that happened here in Los Angeles at the infamous Cecil Hotel.

Here’s the “true life” backstory: The Cecil Hotel in Los Angeles has a history of suicides, murders, rapes and all kinds of grisly history. It’s known as a place where transient people can rent rooms for a low monthly rate and many serial killers and other nogoodniks have resided. The story that really changed things though, and inspired the script for The Bringing, is the story of Canadian tourist Elisa Lam.

Lam was a tourist from Canada who was staying at the hotel. She went missing soon after she had a bit of a meltdown in the hotel elevator which was all captured on hotel security cameras. Weeks later, according to hotel residents, there was “foul-smelling black water coming from their taps.” A maintenance person found Lam’s body, decomposed, in the water tanks on the roof. Here’s the extra crazy part: the doors to the roof were locked, you could only get onto it with a key via a fire escape and there was an alarm that had not been tripped. Even more crazy? The coroner found no traces of drugs in Lam’s body and her cause of death was ruled “accidental due to drowning.” The script for The Bringing, written by Brandon and Phillip Murphy and sparked a bidding war in February of this year, “has been turned into the story of the man investigating her death, and the nightmare he stumbles into.” Apparently Refn is a horror fan and pursued directing this film because he wanted to make a movie in the genre.

I think that Refn would be a welcome addition to the genre, in the company of James Wan and Scott Derrickson, directors who bring class to their films despite them still being scary as hell. Who knows? Maybe Refn will recruit his Drive leading man Ryan Gossling to play the detective who potentially loses his mind to the powers of the hotel. All I know is that I’m in.

What about you, fellow horror nerds? Does this idea sound intriguing to you? What do you think about Refn making the leap into full on horror? Tell us!