HORROR FILMS 101: HALLOWEEN: Our Best Directors - 9. James Wan (Saw, The Conjuring)

Note: Today, after two years of paying off a Nissan Altima, getting it totaled in a collision, and spending another five years making payments on a Honda Civic, I've finally paid off my car. I completely own my car. Sweet Chocolatey Jesus, it's over.

9. James Wan

(Saw, Insidious, The Conjuring)

The only thread is that I think I learned a lot from Saw since it was my first movie. I learned what I could do and what I couldn't do, within my budget. I learned what worked and what didn't work with Saw, and the same with Insidious.

- Interview with Rolling Stone

Where to Start?

Insidious (2010)

James Wan gracefully bowed out of the horror genre with the announcement that he'd direct the seventh Fast and Furious movie. Probably a good idea. After The Conjuring, what else could he do with horror? That film played like a summation of his career, using every trope in the playbook and exacting the story with a fastidious control of the mood. Were The Conjuring a debut film, I'd call it the work of a wunderkind. The fact that Wan worked his way up to it is impressive in a different way. It's proof that a creative doesn't necessarily have to start at "great," but can get there with hard work and discipline.

Looking back on Wan's career now, it's almost ironic to see where he started: directing the hyperkinetic Seven-derivative Saw, a film credited with starting the "torture porn" movement in the USA. The music-video editing and heavy metal soundtrack killed any sense of dread, sure, but even in that film, there are hints of Wan's interest in classical horror stuffs. The most interesting drama amounts to a locked-room mystery, with two people chained to grimy sewers in an industrial bathroom. How did they get there? How will they get out? Alongside that story engine, the villain speaks through a carnivalesque puppet on a tricycle (!) with spiral-painted cheeks and dead eyes.

Wan returned to living puppets again and again, with none more annoying than those in his hackneyed (if well-meaning) Dead Silence. Although that film didn't work, it pointed up Wan's interest in eschewing "modern" horror stories for simpler, more archetypal tales. Insidious plays as a fun riff on Poltergeist, borrowing that film's old woman oracle and journey-to-the-afterlife climax. The Conjuring went further, transplanting its drama in the past and basing it on "true events" (hah). That film made time for the rotting old tree, the bog, the ruined manse on the outskirts of civilization - and whatever you do, don't go in the basement.

The Conjuring stands above his other work (including follow-up Insidious Part Two) in part because of the critical casting of Vera Farmiga and Lili Taylor, who infuse basic characters with warmth and conviction. The other reason is because Wan refined his approach. Saw and Dead Silence played too loud. Insidious overemphasized its jump-scares but allowed for classic scare build-up - one step closer to victory. With The Conjuring , Wan finally quieted down and let events unfold. Think of that unbearable hide-and-seek game. Or the slow journey to the basement. Or Patrick Wilson standing beside the tree. Wan never quite delivered a masterpiece of the genre, but he came damn close, and his career reminds us that classical horror stories still work, goddamnit, so long as you learn how to tell them.