Opening this weekend is the films “Insidious” directed by James Wan, who also directed the first SAW film. He returns with the supernatural thriller starring Patrick Wilson and Rose Byrne and conceived with long time writing partner Leigh Whannell. The writer-director team reinvent the haunted-house genre for a new generation with Insidious, paying tribute to such horror classics as The Exorcist, Poltergeist and The Sixth Sense. Here’s a synopsis of the film:

Renai (Rose Byrne) and her husband Josh (Patrick Wilson) are unpacking boxes in their family’s new home when they first start to sense a sinister presence. Eerie events slowly escalate into supernatural attacks until one accident puts their son in a mysterious coma. When the family flees its ghost-ridden home and attempts to heal itself, Josh’s mother (Barbara Hershey) brings in a team of paranormal investigators led by occult expert Elise Reiner (Lin Shaye). Josh and Renai are initially skeptical, but all doubts are swept away with one terrifying discovery: It’s not the house that’s haunted. It’s their son

The writer-director duo came up with three ideas, explains Wan: “First, we really wanted to make a haunted house movie, but one that felt fresh and unique. There were so many entries in the genre that we both happened to love films like The Innocents, the original version of The Haunting, and of course our nostalgic childhood favorites Poltergeist and The Exorcist. But because the genre had been done to death, we really wanted to upend its conventions and twist its clichés. If we could hook the audience with a favorite scenario, then we could subvert their expectations in ways that felt original and unexpected. We also had a second idea about astral projection, out-of-body experiences–a premise we both found inherently cool yet strangely unexplored on film.”

At the time however they decided to focus on their third idea, expanding it into a feature-length screenplay and then adapting a central scene into a short film. With the script in one hand and the DVD in the other they headed to Hollywood and shopped around their proposal, a down-and-dirty exploitation film they called Saw. From a tiny amount of seed capital (just a six-figure budget), Wan and Whannell produced one of last decade’s landmark horror movies, the flagship work in a franchise that’s grown to seven films and grossed over $850 million worldwide.

Yet despite the snowballing commercial success of the Saw films, Wan and Whannell had to fight for creative control over their subsequent project: the Universal-financed gothic horror Dead Silence (a film inspired by the macabre movies of Britain’s Hammer Films Productions in the 50s, 60s and 70s). They didn’t get to produce the film they really wanted to. After connecting with producers and writer-director of the breakout Horror success Paranormal Activity, they were given the chance to use their creative freedom to make the film they longed for. Where Saw’s use of body horror and squirm-inducing violence pushed the recent cycle of “extreme” genre films to its baroque limit, Insidious looks back to a more classical style of horror.

“The first horror movie I saw was Poltergeist and it scarred me for life,” says James Wan. “And honestly, on Insidious we set out to make the scariest film EVER. That was really our goal, to shoot for the moon. When someone described Insidious as Poltergeist meets The Exorcist on acid, I thought: I’ll take that!”

“Sixth Sense was another big inspiration,” Wan continues. “It was a drama about a young family, a single mom and her son, where it just so happened that the drama was of the supernatural type. The film doesn’t make anything too big. It’s very grounded in reality, and because of that the horror plays stronger. Our guiding principle on Insidious was that the more dimensionality and humanity we gave the characters, the more the scare scenes would register.” Rather than cast actors associated with cartoonishly heroic roles and schlock genres, the filmmakers gravitated towards Rose Byrne and Patrick Wilson, Tony- and Emmy-nominated performers (respectively) who have been acclaimed by critics for their serious dramatic work on both stage and screen. “I wanted great actors that felt real, and I got that in Rose and Patrick,” says Wan. “I think their performances help to ground the film in reality. When their son falls into a coma, you really feel their anguish and pain. I cannot speak highly enough of these two.” Adds Whannell, “Both of these actors lend an air of credibility to the film. They are such strong actors that you instantly believe that this is a real family.”

Once the audience was fully engaged with the characters as characters, the filmmakers deployed three main strategies for heightening the scares. First, they based their suspenseful set-pieces on details drawn not from other movies but from real-life experiences that had happened to them or to their friends and family. “As much as possible, we decided to draw from supernatural stories that have happened to us personally, and our friend and families. So technically, I can say Insidious is based on true events!” explains Wan. “I tried to focus on the stories and inexplicably weird events that actually scare me in real life. I trust that what scares me would send chills up the audience’s spine too, so I become my own guinea pig in a way.” Second, they invested a disproportionate amount of time and attention into the soundtrack. Layering ambient atmosphere, eerie foley effects and the occasional scream of orchestral strings into an unsettling audioscape, Wan and Whannell consciously sought to go beyond the groaning-floorboards and howling-wind clichés of the genre. The third strategy for heightening the horror was to continuously tweak the editing and timing of set-piece scares again and again until they were perfect.

Get tickets to see Insidious at Fandango or movietickets.com.

Insidious Trailer

(thanks Min Y for the video interview tip)

director James Wan talks Insidious Part 1

director James Wan talks Insidious Part 2

More about director James Wan
James Wan was one of the youngest students ever to be accepted into the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology’s highly respected film and media school in Australia, where he first met Whannell and together they started creating and developing the world and characters that would become known as Saw, now the most successful horror movie series of all time as named this year by the Guinness World Records.

Wan directed the first Saw, which premiered at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival and stars multi-award winning Danny Glover and Cary Elwes. Lionsgate released Saw in October 2004 and has subsequently released a new installment every October since, with the latest installment, Saw 3D (Saw VII), coming out this October. Wan remains an executive producer on the franchise. Dead Silence, Wan’s second feature film, was released by Universal Pictures in March 2006. Wan’s third feature film Death Sentence, an action packed revenge thriller starring Kevin Bacon, was released by Fox in 2007. In 2008, Wan co-created, produced and directed a comedy short film Doggie Heaven as part of a slate of original programming which premiered on XBOX Live Marketplace. Wan’s other credits include creative consultant on the SAW video game and co-creator and director of “Loved Ones”, a trailer for EA’s “Dead Space”. Wan received the Greg Tepper Award in 2004, a prestigious award for outstanding achievement in Film.