Movies Features

Leigh Whannell and James Wan talks Insidious

By Anne Brodie Mar 30, 2011, 17:10 GMT

Follows the terrifying story of a family who shortly after moving discover that dark spirits have possessed their home and that their son has inexplicably fallen into a coma. Trying to escape the haunting and save their son, they move again only to realize that it was not their house that was haunted.   ...more

Australian filmmakers Leigh Whannell and James Wan unleashed Saw and the Jigsaw Killer on the world of R-rated horror films and spawned a money-maker. The original film cost $1.2M and grossed $56M and that success followed them through Saw II and Saw III. And they changed the face of horror. 

Saw was raw in its violence, extreme and dark, and unrelentingly evil; it set the tone for R-rated films that followed. 

The boys are back with a new horror film and a new approach; gone is the gore of days past, replaced by their take on that beloved horror chestnut, the haunted house, in Insidious. 

Monsters and Critics spoke with Whannell and Wan in Toronto about this sudden change in direction.

Monsters and Critics - Horror changes so much – new styles of horror – what are the basic components of horror that cannot change?

Leigh Whannell – If there is one essential, it’s the same as a comedy, that fundamental aspect is it has to make you laugh and for us, in horror, it has to scare you.

M&C – We are in some ways, immune from being scared by all that came before, so how did the Splat Pack find a new way to scare us?

James Wan – The ways of scaring people change.  Each generation grows up with a particular type of horror films. For Leigh and I, we grew up with films like Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th,  Halloween and its really interesting to think that today’s generation, young kids of people in early twenties, they come up to us and say “We grew up on the Saw films.  It’s like seven years of their life.

LW - Harry Potter for gore maniacs!

JW - We’re honored by that.  But the reason Leigh and I decided to make Insidious is that we love the haunted house genre.  We think it’s the scariest of all the horror movies; it’s the scariest subgenre because it’s one we can all relate to because we all live in houses.

We all have families, mum and dads and the idea of something happening to our family in our fortress, is frightening.  Our fortress of solitude.  That’s the subgenre we love and feel it is particular horror film that does not need bloods and gust to be effective.

It’s not like Saw, not the imitators that Saw has spawned; we think it’s very important. I wanted to prove as a director that you could make a suspenseful, creepy movie without blood and guts.

M&C – But blood and guts has its place.

JW – We totally agree. But when I go into a zombie movie I want to see my gore and blood and guts. I don’t want to see a zombie film that’s PG-13, because that’s just weak.

LW – Our favorite type of horror films are the ones that induces dread.  Something that plants a creepy insidious seed in the back of your mind.

JW - That was a subtle plug!

M&C – It was actually pretty unsubtle!  Why is horror and violence such an enduring part of our artistic culture?

LW – It’s a very primal, human, instinctual thing.

JW - There’s a human excitement about being scared. It’s fun to be scared in a controlled environment, like being on a roller-coaster.

LW - A roller-coaster is a simulation of being in a train and plunging off a cliff. If you really were in a train and it derailed and plunged off a cliff that would not be fun. You wouldn’t be throwing your hands up and going “Woo!” you’d be crying for fear. 

A roller-coaster lets you know what that feeling is kind of like, gives you the same rush in your stomach, but you know eventually the rollercoaster will stop and you’ll get off. A Horror movie is the same thing.  It’s like walking down a dark alley and realizing someone is following you. Now if that happened tonight to someone on the streets of this city, it wouldn’t be fun.
 
Horror movies just go there and humans like doing that.  They like dipping into the world of darkness, parts of us are inherently morbid. We are attracted to violence.

M&C – I think horror films manage anxiety.

JW – I think horror films are cathartic, horror films for a lot of people who have a dark side.  You go to a movie and watch it and get it out of your system. Was it John Carpenter who said “If I wasn’t making horror films I’d be a serial killer”.
 
LW – The horror tree is so big and I do think the different subgenres represent different things.  Gorier films, zombie films, those are the types of film that let us indulge our violent side, the destructive part of us. 

To me ghost films aren’t about that side of us.  They are about satiating out curiosity about the unknown.  The afterlife. Anything that is in an unknown realm.

JW – Human beings have and insatiable need to know, like outer space for instance, the big questions. The biggest question is “Do you believe in God?” in something that you cannot see. Humans fear the unknown, they fear what they can’t understand, that’s the side of our brains that’s ghost films and haunted house films appeal to.

Not the destructive cathartic “grrr”, ragey side you see when you see Saw or Evil Dead.

M&C – You also have something absolutely essential in any decent horror film – a monster that looks great!

JW – Leigh and I actually have a back-story for him that did not show up in the movie.  He’s the Lipstick faced Demon in the credits.  The reason he has a red face, is he paints his face with lipstick.  That’s gross!  He’s trying to lure people to him but he’s a demon and he doesn’t know any better. 

He tries to entice people to him so he looks like a clown, a happy face, so he paints his face with lipstick. We shot that scene of him putting on lipstick but it got cut! 

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