A few people walked out, scared as hell. A burly radio producer kept looking over his shoulder, wondering if people were following him. A publicist was shaking in her UGGs.
Other members of the audience at a recent screening of the new horror film Insidious had similarly unnerved responses. The movie is that scary.
Surprise, surprise—the film’s also rated PG-13. That should not deter fans of horror, who are guaranteed goosebumps from this story of a young boy who mysteriously falls into a coma when his family moves into a charming new home. Weird visions, disturbing and eerie sounds—including Tiny Tim’s ever-chilling rendition of “Tiptoe Through the Tulips”—haunt the boy’s parents, played by Patrick Wilson and Rose Byrne. So what’s a family to do? Move, of course. And what’s a family to do if the spirits they encounter are unwilling to stop? Call on some parapsychologists to investigate the apparitions.
Now comes another surprise, surprise. The decidedly old-school terror tale—little blood, gore, or CGI—is from screenwriter Leigh Whannell and director James Wan. Sound familiar? They’re the guys behind the Saw franchise, the so-called creators of the whole “torture porn” cycle that has given us the Hostel films, Captivity and other nasty cinematic pieces of work. The 35-year-old filmmakers’ other joint credits include Dead Silence, a 2007 scarefest about a demented ventriloquist’s dummy. Wan’s Death Sentence was a 2007 reworking of the Charles Bronson classic Death Wish with Kevin Bacon in the lead.
Wan, born in Malaysia and of Chinese ancestry, and Whannell, a native Aussie who appears as an actor in Saw and Saw III, met while attending college in Melbourne. Hardcore horror fans, the two made a few shorts together; in 2004, they turned out a 9 ½ minute showcase movie called Saw. This led to indie studio Lionsgate producing their first feature for a paltry budget of $1.2 million. The diabolical, crafty horror movie featuring an terminally ill engineer-turned-killer nicknamed Jigsaw received surprisingly solid reviews and took in over $100 million at the box-office, spawning six popular sequels.
Recently, MovieFanFare sat down in a Philadelphia hotel with Wan and Whannell to talk about their career turnaround with Insidious, their horror influences and lots more.
MFF: Was making Insidious, a PG-13-rated, old-school shocker, a conscious effort to change audience and Hollywood’s perception of you?
James Wan: I think partially, but Leigh and I just wanted to make a scary movie. It really doesn’t matter what subgenre it falls into. Leigh and I just want to make the scary movies we love, and the subgenre of haunted house films is one we truly love. When we went into it, we said, ‘This is a subgenre that’s been done to death, and we want to put a new spin to it.’ And that’s how we got Insidious.
Leigh Whannell: After Saw, we got our 15 minutes of fame and we were running around, doing our victory lap around Hollywood, and thought we better do another film quickly. The problem is, we did it with a studio, and that film was Dead Silence. And I never thought that represented the best horror film we could make. So it’s been all these years where I thought we didn’t make a film that was super, super scary. We certainly didn’t get there with Dead Silence. That was such a tough film to work on. I think this opportunity came up with the producers of Paranormal Activity. They said we can make this film now. (We said) ‘We’d love to do it with you guys!’ And James and I said, ‘Now’s the opportunity to make that film.’
MFF: Is this something you had wanted to make since the release of the first Saw film?
JW: We had this film idea with us for a while. As a director, though, I’ve been pigeonholed as the guy who started the “torture porn” trend. I would say for me, from the back of my mind, there was a conscious decision to make something that had next to no violence, no gore and no blood, but proves that one is capable of making a scary, chilling suspenseful movie without blood to shock somebody.
LW: It’s interesting to see the message boards (on the Internet) and kids are saying, ‘PG-13, this is going to be crap,’ as if the rating is an indicator of how scary something is.
MFF: So is Insidious your kids’ film?
LW (laughs): Yeah, this is our children’s film. Bigger kids, though.
MFF: Did you watch other films to get an idea of how you wanted this one to work?
JW: We didn’t need to. We know the genre so well. We knew what we didn’t want to do. When we started I had a list of commandments printed out on a piece of paper—No False Scares. No Cats Jumping Out Of the Closet. No Friends or Relatives Standing Behind the Character after Closing the Mirror Cabinet. We wanted to take all the clichés we hate of modern horror films, and just reverse them and make something that was more pure. The people’s main complaint about haunted house movies is (‘if the house is haunted, why not) move—move out of the house?!’ They never seem to do that with haunted house movies. They always seem to tough it out. We thought, ‘Let’s have the people move and have the ghosts follow them.’
MFF: Can you tell me what some of your influences are, and your favorite horror movies that may have impacted you when you were younger?
JW: Leigh and I have separate lists, that kind of cross over at some point. For me, it was Poltergeist and Jaws, among many others. The Exorcist, too. These were the films that scared me. Today, they are still really great and scary, even in today’s world where we’ve had so many other horror films come along. Recently, I would say The Sixth Sense and The Others. These are PG-13 movies and they are frighteningly well-made.
LW: When I was a kid, I was a wimp. After I saw Jaws, I couldn’t sleep with my feet under the blanket for a year, because I thought it was water and Jaws was under there.
JW: He had deep psychological problems.
LH: Was Flowers in the Attic a TV movie? In Australia it went straight to TV. It scared me. When I went to film school, we started to watch Japanese horror films like Ringu (The Ring). But if there is one I have to pick from my life and I still can’t get through, it would be The Shining. Even if I watch it on my own today, it is still too much. I don’t know what it is. James isn’t as scared of The Shining as I am. There’s something about The Shining that just gets to me.
JW: There’re so many mainstream films, but lesser-known films are an inspiration to me and Insidious especially. Not many people would know of Carnival of Souls.
LH: Or The Entity.
JW: The Entity is pretty well known.
MFF: Well, you have the star of The Entity, Barbara Hershey, in a co-starring role in your movie.
JW: One of Bob Clark’s early films called Death Dream (was memorable). I get inspiration for Insidious from these films. The score for Death Dream inspired the score for Insidious. But the inspiration for Insidious, for Leigh and myself, was actually stories from family and friends. I’ve known him since we were 17 or 18. And we love to scare each other with ghost stories we heard from family and friends. And when we finally got around to making Insidious, we looked at each other said, ‘Why don’t we make a movie based on the stories we’ve heard and capture that?’
LW: I remember a friend of mine telling me he woke up in the middle of the night and he felt like someone was grabbing his neck and he heard this voice say ‘Don’t you dare.’ When you have a friend tell you this, you trust them and it just gets under your skin. So we’ve actually taken a lot of inspiration from that.
JW: When I direct a film, I try to capture that chilling effect that I got when I heard the story. I try to apply that to the film.
MFF: Without giving anything away, you have a very effective, disturbing ending that will undoubtedly surprise many. Was there a question about ending the film this way?
LW: I think one of the ways we did this was creative freedom. The producers said you are not going to have much of a budget or much of a schedule at all, all of this stuff that made our lives a living hell. I had to write the film quickly and James had to direct the film super quickly.
JW: Sorry to interrupt…Insidious is the lowest budgeted film we’ve made, and that’s saying a lot because Saw was made for nothing.
MFF: What was the shooting schedule for Insidious?
JW: 22 days.
LW: That’s a good indication of what you have to work with. The payoff you get in that situation is creative freedom. The fact that these guys let us go off and make the film we wanted to make was the reason for us doing it.
JW: I wanted to edit the film myself, and this was the way to do it.
LW: And I wanted to be in it. It was me or Jake Gyllenhaal. I’m like the low-budget Jake Gyllenhaal.
MFF: Was Japanese horror a big influence on Insidious? Since kids are heavily involved, one would assume so.
LW: Not really. Not on this one. One of the big influences was The Innocents, based on the book The Turn of the Screw. And that is about two really scary kids, made in the 1960s. We love those J-horror films and they are probably in our subconscious and somehow it all filters through.
JW: I grew up in Australia but I am of Asian heritage and in Asian culture, creepy old women with long black hair and little kids are predominant, especially when it comes to superstition and ghost stories, so that found itself into the film.
MFF: It was just reported that James signed a deal to produce several low-budget horror movies. What can you tell us about that?
JW: I’m going to produce a series of low budget films. Small, independently-financed movies so I can have creative control and shepherd a director who would love to have the creative freedom, to get their first or second film done without restraints or compromises. I always found from my own experience, that’s when you make the best movie. You may not have money to rent the best toys to work with or buy the biggest movie stars, but it allows you to make the quality stuff.
MFF: So you prefer working like this?
JW: I love working independently, but it would be nice to work with a real budget for a change. (Laughs)
LW: As a writer, I prefer the independent way because of the creative freedom. That’s what I value so much. I love the fact that what I wrote is what James directed, and what James wanted is what we’re seeing on screen. It’s not like anyone’s fingerprints are on it or I had to change a bunch of things.
JW: I’ve only directed four films, but this is the first one that I made where the first cut of the film is the director’s cut. So it wasn’t like (dealing with) censorship or the ratings system or the studio or producers who wanted me to change the film. What I put out there is what I wanted.
MFF: So you guys invented the whole Saw phenomena, and have credits as executive producers on Saw 3 to the most recent film, Saw 3D: The Final Chapter. What are your thought on the entire franchise?
JW: For us, we loved the first film the best. Nostalgically, it’s indicative of this great time in our lives when we made the film. Quality-wise, we think it is the best, because of the story and the twist ending. I think that in the world of sequels it’s a case of diminishing returns. So I think the quality of the films got less and less as the series went on. It’s good that the producers decided to finish the franchise when they did. If you went on any longer, it would be ridiculous—some people argue it’s already ridiculous. But I think it’s good they finished the franchise when they did, and they managed to keep fans happy. If you talk to Saw fans, they love the franchise.
LW: I think they love the franchise, and Lionsgate and the producers have done a great job keeping it as long they have. When you get to horror sequels, how many go out (into theaters) huge financially? I don’t know of many franchises that do that—James Bond, maybe? Star Wars? And the fact they serialized it so each movie ties into the last. There’s a whole soap opera aspect to it.
JW: I know from going to these different conventions where you meet these Saw fans, they love that. One kid came up to us and said ‘It’s the Star Wars of horror films just because they all tie together and into the last installment.’
LW: And when he was referencing Star Wars, he was referencing, Episode 1, Episode 2… (Laughs) But I am so removed from the sequels, I don’t know how to answer this question. It’s kind of weird to see something you’ve created go down such a long journey and this huge path. You sit back and look at it and say ‘That’s what I created, but it’s going to take on its own life.’ It’s gratifying in one way, though, to see how many lives it’s lived.
Here’s Irv’s review of Insidious: