Shadow lands

The Aussie team behind Saware back with Insidious, a slow-burning ghost story. Director James Wan – such a nice young man! – talks 'torture porn' and terror with DONALD CLARKE

YOU MEET horrid people in all fields of endeavour. Monk conferences and lollipop lady conventions are, surely, populated by their fair share of bitter malcontents and backbiting underachievers. But, despite the gruesome nature of their enthusiasms, horror fans and practitioners tend to be disproportionately nice. James Wan and Leigh Whannell are a case in point.

The two young Australians, creators of the notorious Sawfranchise, have arrived in Dublin to promote a fine new haunted-house flick, Insidious. As expected, Wan, a 34-year-old of Chinese ancestry, fails to chain me to the radiator or brandish any form of rusty torture implement.

“Yeah, you do meet the nicest people at horror conventions,” he enthuses. “It’s the same with heavy-metal fans. They are the scariest-looking people, but the nicest people. Somebody once said that horror directors are the happiest people because they exorcise their demons on-screen. Maybe there’s something in that.”

The various rabble-rousing idiots who declared Saw a menace to society would, one imagines, be somewhat surprised to meet Wan. Spiky of hair, endlessly cheery of disposition, he is nobody's idea of a blood-thirsty maniac. But, since the first film's debut in 2004, the Sawfranchise has stirred a fair degree of ill-informed outrage. This was the film that launched the subgenre known – often to those who hadn't seen any films meeting the supposed critera – as "torture porn". Once again, as with The Exorcist, video nasties and Italian cannibal shockers, horror film-makers were responsible for leading society towards barbarism.

"I would feel better about the phrase 'torture porn' if it wasn't always used in a derogatory way," Wan says. "But that's not the case. It's not a term I care very much for. If you watch the first Sawfilm – the only one I directed – you'll see the torture stuff is actually very muted. The first film played far more like a thriller."

You could see Insidious(significant title, incidentally) as a creative response to those critics. Though nobody is likely to confuse the picture with Winnie the Pooh, it offers a much slower burn than the Saw pictures.

More of a ghost story than a straight-up horror, the film finds Patrick Wilson and Rose Byrne playing a middle-class couple experiencing weird happenings in their new house. Spectres flit past the window. Strange noises emanate from apparently unoccupied spaces. Eventually their young son falls into a baffling coma. Greater madness follows.

In earlier interviews, Wan, born in Malaysia but raised in Perth, has explained that he first connected with horror when he caught a glimpse of Tobe Hooper's Poltergeist. Indeed Insidious, which was written by Leigh Whannell, his loyal creative partner, looks and feels a little like a tribute to that popular ghost flick.

"No. It's not that. Leigh was not as affected by Poltergeistas I was. So it's just worked out that way. Our biggest influences on Insidious were ghost stories we'd heard from our friends – stories passed down through the years. We thought that, if we got chills just listening to them, imagine if we put them on screen. Let's scare other people."

As wildly enthusiastic as any fanboy, Wan goes on to explain that he and Whannell were particularly influenced by Hammer horror and by older ghostly films such as The Innocentsand The Haunting. If he had his way they would have made the film in black and white. "But today's kids aren't into that. It's weird."

He has a point. Too many younger horror fans – too many younger movie fans, for that matter – seem to believe that cinema began in 1970. The cause, as Wan agrees, is, perhaps, that there are now too many ways to avoid watching old films. A few decades ago, if a horror classic screened on ITV, you might only have two other channels available. If Call My Bluffdidn't take your fancy, then you almost felt forced to watch Bride of Frankenstein.

“Today’s kids have so much to watch,” he says. “And if there is nothing to watch on TV they go to YouTube. If you are making films in today’s world you have to be educated as to where the film-viewing climate is at. Look, I want to make commercial films. I am not making arthouse films.”

Still, it seems as if the latest young tyro is in contact with his inner old fogey. Prompted to name influences, he is as happy to mention Dead of Night, the 1945 British shocker, as more recent, more blood-drenched entertainments. Where did this taste come from? Wan, born in the late 1970s, is a child of the video generation. At one point, rather poignantly, he says he wished he had been around to experience the unveiling of such ancient classics as Jawsand The Exorcist.

“I can very easily pinpoint the time that I realised I might become a film-maker. I was 11 years old. I came across my cousin’s college guidebook. She was about to move on to university. I picked it up one day and there was this stuff about film-making courses. Hang on! People direct films? They don’t just happen by magic? As a kid, I saw spaceships on screen and kind of thought they were real. I was a very naive kid. I immediately knew that was something I wanted to do.”

While studying film at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, he met Whannell, an aspiring actor and writer, and the two men formed a common bond. While their colleagues were all dreaming of becoming the next Ingmar Bergman, the lively kids aspired to make populist films for the masses. Eventually, after Wan had knocked out one no-budget feature, they decided to construct an irresistible pitch. The eventual idea was a beauty.

Two men wake up in a grubby bathroom to find their ankles chained to the piping. Saws are available, but, after working furiously at the chains, they realise the instruments are only useful for severing their unfortunate feet. Gradually, the film escalates into a very carefully planned exercise in contemporary Grand Guignol.

When the pitch failed to attract interest in Australia, the boys’ agent persuaded them to make their way to Hollywood. To their surprise, the gamble paid off.

"We weren't sure about the plan," he says. "The analogy we used was that it was like we had failed to climb a hill and then decided to scale Mount Olympus. We had made a short version of Saw, which we showed around. But we were thinking, 'Hey. There's people who are touting round million-dollar Nike advertisements trying to make features'."

As Wan explains it, having planned to make the film for peanuts, they knew that “the script had to be the star”. With that in mind, they worked furiously on the piece for a whole year. The US agents immediately showed interest, but they didn’t want Wan to direct the piece or Whannell to act in it. Eventually, Lionsgate Pictures let them have their way.

“I really wish I could say it was an idea that Leigh and I had for a long time. It was actually a movie that emerged out of necessity. We thought that we might have to go the Kevin Smith route and finance it ourselves by maxing out credit cards. So we needed an idea that was contained in one space, but we also had a very clear high concept. It was a no-budget script that became a low-budget film.”

Made for $1.2 million, Saw went on to gross more than $100 million worldwide. Six sequels followed – none directed by Wan, though he remained an executive producer – and the characters entered the horror pantheon. Jigsaw, the terminally ill maniac who plans the various outrages, is now an icon of significant magnitude.

"Like it or not, Jigsaw is the Freddie Krueger for this generation. A lot of today's kids did not grow up on Freddie Krueger or the Halloween films. But they love the Sawfranchise. Here's the crazy thing. The same way each Harry Potterbook is a year of school life, every Halloween kids got a Sawmovie. Kids tell us they grew up with Saw, and that's pretty humbling and mind- blowing. This little thing we started became a whole pop-cultural movement."

There you have it. James Wan is JK Rowling with added bloodlust. If he wasn’t so nice you’d find the idea perfectly chilling.

Insidious is out next Friday (April 29)