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Director Research

ABDULWASAY RAO

James Wan

About James Wan (born 27 February 1977) is an Australian film producer, screenwriter and film director of Malaysian Chinese descent. He is widely known for directing the horror film Saw (2004) and creating Billy the puppet. Wan has also directed Dead Silence, Death Sentence (2007), Insidious (2010), Insidious: Chapter 2, and The Conjuring (2013). As of August 2014, Wan is directing Fast & Furious 7, which is due for release in 2015.Before his success in the mainstream film industry, he made his first feature length film, Stygian, with Shannon Young, which won "Best Guerrilla Film" at the Melbourne Underground Film Festival (MUFF) in 2000.Since creating the franchise, Wan and Leigh Whannell have served as executive producers to the sequels Saw II, Saw III, Saw IV, but was not involved with Saw.It was announced that an adaptation of the graphic novel Nightfall was to be Wan's next film after Death Sentence. The plot involves the events that take place after a criminal is sent to a Texas prison run by vampires. However, as of December 2012, the director's IMDB page does not list the film, nor is the project classified as a film in "pre-production" or a project in the "filming" stage.As of 2012, Disney is reported to be developing a remake of The Rocketeer, and Wan has talked about directing the film.Wan directed a trailer for the survival horror video game Dead Space.

James Wan is one of the most adaptive directorial personalities in modern genre filmmaking, but his career didn’t always seem like it would turn out this way. Wan’s Saw was an indie mega-hit, spawning the most extensive horror franchise of the 21st century thus far. But Wan quickly distanced himself from the films, attempting to establish himself as a genre auteur of diverse skill sets. With his underwhelming one-two punch of Dead Silence and Death Sentence in 2007, he failed to develop a reputation away from the franchise that found continued success beyond him.

But with Insidious and The Conjuring (this summer’s sleeper hit and one of the few pieces of Hollywood entertainment that actually entertained in the past few months), Wan found himself the modern master of the supernatural haunted house thriller, a horror sensibility miles away from the “torture porn” craze Wan’s franchise inception became associated with. This weekend sees the successful director helming his first sequel, Insidious Chapter 2, and Wan has signed on to make the next entry in the recently revived Fast/Furious franchise. Point being, Wan has proven himself against the limitations of the subgenre constraints he helped create, showing that he is a filmmaker interested in appealing to mass audiences through a variety of popular genres.

Without question, James Wan is one of the most exciting new filmmakers to hit our genre over the last few years. The Aussie filmmaker made quite the splash with his partner in crime Leigh Whannell and their smash hit SAW (which went on to become one of the most profitable franchises). Since then, Wan has been working steadily, bringing us an array of new and interesting films. I have been a fan since the beginning with this man, and he certainly knows his stuff and knows how to keep things interesting. He has worked up quite the unique resume, so let’s take a look at this awesome talent ...

I could almost put his entire filmography here, as all of his films are fabulous. However, I think there is one which stands out above the rest, and this film proves that horror can still be scary in this day and age. I speak of course about INSIDIOUS, the film which scared us all and left quite the impression on more than a few people. Watching this film in the theater was quite the rewarding experience. It had some great atmosphere, and I actually got freaked out a few times. It also holds up to repeated viewings as well, and you'll find some things in there that you probably missed the first time.

The first two acts of this film are excellent. I think that it loses a bit of steam with the third act, but it was still exceptionally good and entertaining. At first glance, it’s a haunted house film, but for those of us who have seen it know that it is much more than that. As the film progresses, it really becomes something quite unique and even disturbing. The script written by Leigh Whannell is a really intriguing one. It’s very sharp, really smart, and at times it has a bit of humour. The pairing of Whannell and Wan works so perfectly here, as Wan really brought Whannell's words to life and it looks and feels amazing.

The performances in the film are fantastic, Wan always gets great performances from his actors, and they absolutely shine in this film. Patrick Wilson and Rose Bryne are the central couple. They felt very natural and they had that 'couple' chemistry that really worked for their characters and the situation that they were in. The two boys Ty Simpkins and Andrew Astor were both also really good. They actually came off really well and weren't annoying, which can sometimes happen with poorly written child roles. Certainly not the case here. Leigh Whannell also has a supporting role, along with Australian comedian Angus Sampson. Both were really good and very entertaining. Barbara Hershey was solid. It was cool to see her, albeit in a small role. The stand out though was the wonderful and always extremely entertaining Lin Shaye. This woman was fantastic, and I thought that she gave one of the best supporting performances in a recent horror film. Very natural and very creepy, this woman owned the role.

INSIDIOUS is really great and a genuinely creepy effort. The film works on so many levels. While the third act may have been lacking, it certainly didn't bring the rest of the film down for me. I actually liked the direction, and I appreciated the ending as well. These types of films don't come around often, and with this, James Wan delivered and proved here that he is one of the best directors working today.

TRADEMARKS

I mentioned earlier about the James Wan-Leigh Whannell partnership, and this really is a big trademark of both men. These guys have been friends for a long time, and they have developed this great bond and a fantastic working relationship. Their scripts are great, and it is always great to see Whannell acting with Wan as his director. I really do have a lot of trust and faith in both of these men, and their work is very much top notch.

I find that James Wan has really developed a clear directing style, and he uses some of the same tricks and techniques in his films. All of his films have a specific look to them, a kind of washed-out colour look, but also very vibrant at the same time. His films are also structured very well, and he likes to use the quick cuts and crazy editing to enhance the experience. This is perhaps more evident in SAW and in INSIDIOUS.

DIRECTORIAL STYLE

Real Horror Lies in the Sound, Not the Image

We might not have thought about Wan as a filmmaker who mastered the terror of the soundscape in 2004, but Insidious and The Conjuring are nothing without their use of horrific sounds to fill the mind’s gaps. The image has the power to display and depict horrific, disturbing acts, but it’s sound that allows abject terror to enter the audience’s psyche beyond any gruesomeness (or lack thereof) displayed onscreen.

Wan’s point speaks to that old Hitchcock adage about letting audience imagination do the extra work: suspense lies in the anticipation, not the reveal, and the reveal is best built through sound rather than a solitary reliance on the image.

Be Sincere About Your ScaresWan and his longtime writing partner Leigh Wannell explain in this interview how they’re not fans of “false scares,” of creating arbitrary moments of suspense that don’t serve the overall arc of the horror story. This is a particularly instructive lesson for movies – too many false scares reveals the inherent falseness of being scared in a movie theater, of being affected by what amounts to a series of flickering images of staged events projected onscreen.Maintaining the stakes of the film through calculated, worthwhile scares allows the audience to continue investing in the story of the film, and thus become more affected by its moments of fear. False scares are gimmicks, and the audience and filmmakers know it. So, if you can’t be sincere about your scares, you aren’t sincere about your movie, and your audience won’t treat it seriously in turn.Independent Filmmaking Has Serious ConstraintsWan and Whannell are admirably candid here about their lack of experience in making their 2004 breakthrough film Saw, and how that (in their eyes and those of others) impacted the finished film negatively. I for one still think that the first Saw, despite many of its sequels, is an interesting post-Seven thriller executed by people with a strong sense of the genre’s history. But that said, it’s refreshing to hear filmmakers so ready to admit that making movies, especially first movies, is a learning process that the audience is, in effect, witnessing.Wan has spoken numerous times about how Saw would have benefitted if the inventively sparse $1M budget had been elevated to something similarly modest, like $3-$5M. He isn’t disowning his own property, or claiming an entitlement to a film with higher production values. Wan is simply explicating that, while independent filmmaking does allow certain freedoms, it has notable constrictions in terms of resources available, constrictions that may cause the filmmaker to compromise their vision.This testimony is a helpful reminder that filmmaking exists within a pragmatic economic space in which one is capable of realizing certain things and not others; even when you have a hit like Saw, it can be a profound artistic disappointment according to the standards of a filmmaker lacking in experience and resources.

Don’t Give In to Creativity at Gunpoint

Just as Wan attests to the limitations of independent filmmaking, Whannell witnesses the ways in which commercial filmmaking has its limitations as well, forcing the filmmaker to pursue a product that is, once again, not up to their personal standards. Realizing a personal vision within these constraints, no matter what industry (or lack thereof) one works in, is a notably difficult task.

Be Aware of How People See Your Work, Even When It’s Not Your Work

Wan here talks about taking a hold of one’s filmmaking brand, knowing that the films one becomes associated with through advertising, promotion, and discourse are not the same thing as the films one actually directs. While admittedly not a passion project, Insidious Chapter 2 attempts to remedy the sin Wan sees in the Saw sequels: the gap between his brand association and his lack of contributive vision. No matter how the sequel to Insidious is received, he can at least rightfully claim that his creative property was executed in his own terms.

Have a Good TimeOne might not always think of the set of a horror film as one that should be amicable and light, but a sense of trust and enjoyment could help build a filmmaking community that gives their all. Also, this B-roll footage of Insidious is just too damn cute, so I couldn’t resist including it.