I loved 'The Conjuring' so much. It's really scary.
— Leigh Whannell
When the whole 'Saw' thing died down, I feel like I had praise withdrawals. I had never been congratulated so much on something in my life. So, it was a really amazing whirlwind when 'Saw' came out.
Any movie that deals with an AI computer voice stands in the long, long shadow of '2001.'
I think horror is a genre that can be quite good to women.
Horror film fans are pretty starved for quality. If you do something thoughtful or if you make something good, they're so thankful for it.
One of the most crucial aspects of a haunted house movie is the fear and disbelief of the characters, because they don't know what's happening to them.
The great thing about horror films is that they work on a low budget. The genre is the star. You don't need big movie stars, and I actually think a lot of times that the best horror films are the low budget contained ones.
Freddie Kruger, Jason, Michael Myers - they're all our generation. I think the kids wanted some new guys that they could take ownership of and Jigsaw was that guy.
I think you can't help but write in your own voice.
You might not have the biggest budget or resources or cast, but if you have a great story, people will latch onto it.
You can't compare David Cronenberg's 'The Fly' to the older version.
I found myself in this conundrum of loving acting, but not liking the path that you have to take to do it. I was just never good at auditioning, so basically I decided I would just write my own stuff and if I could get a role in it, then fine.
I think, what happened with 'Dead Silence' is that other people told us that we should be doing that and now that I look back, I realize, 'should' is not a word that comes into an art. It's whatever you're feeling like doing.
The writing process is the time where nothing's been set in stone. It's a blank slate, or a blank page.
When 'Psycho' came out back in 1960, it was seen as an abomination and as this really gory thing. We all watch 'Psycho' today, of course, and think it's so tame since there's no blood or any real gore in it. But for the standards of the day when it was released, it was extreme.
Writing feels safe, you know, it's a hard job, but at least you're in your office or wherever you are and there's no one standing over your shoulder staring at what you're writing. And when you're directing, everybody's looking over your shoulder.
I'm the opposite of the actor that is bursting with confidence who just knows they're going to make it. I'm the guy who's like yeah, probably, it won't happen.
I think true connectivity is something that is rare in sequels. I mean I love the first 'Die Hard' film; you won't find a bigger 'Die Hard' fan than me. But I feel like with the sequels, they're just taking that character and dropping him in different scenarios. There's no real connective tissue.
I do feel like in filmmaking you are largely in control of the perception of you. If you want to be seen as the comedic person you've got to write a comedy and go after that.
Once I have a story idea I like it doesn't even matter to me what genre it is, I'm just so happy to have one.
I felt the violence in 'Upgrade' was necessary because I wanted to show what a computer was capable of.
In chatting to directors over the years, including James Wan, they always tell you the war stories. No one ever says, 'Oh, I had a great time on that film.' It's always this went wrong, that went wrong.
As I was writing 'Insidious 3' I started to fall in love with the characters and the story. I became very possessive of it and I didn't want someone else to do it.
In a lot of ways knowledge kills fear. Once you know who the boogie man is, once you know what's under the bed, it can still be frightening but that fear of the unknown is gone.
I grew up in Melbourne.
I think repetition is the hardest thing to avoid with sequels, because you've told a story and now you're adding more story to the story.
Certain stories need the resources of a studio. If you're telling a story about a giant robot war in outer space, you're going to need the money and the resources most of the time to do it justice.
Somewhere in the '80s during the home video era something happened and horror started getting more and more marginalized and thought of as schlock.
If you chose to be an actor, if you take that baton and say 'OK, this is what I want to do with my life.' you're really putting your fate and your life in the hands of others.
One of our film lecturers, one of the guys teaching the course, said to the departing film class, 'No one in this room is going to make it, as a filmmaker.' I have no idea why he said that.
I was influenced by people like David Fincher and William Friedkin, and these directors who kinda paint their films with these dark shades.
That's one of the great things about creativity. You labor away in a room, and when you're writing a film, it couldn't be more of a solitary activity or a lonelier job, but if you then write a film that gets made and goes out into the world, it kind of flies away from you. It's not yours anymore.
I wasn't a frustrated writer who really wanted to act or a frustrated writer who really wanted to direct. I was really happy writing screenplays, and there's a lot of people who just do that - they're screenwriters.
When you sit down to write a film, you direct it in your head. If you are writing a scene, you are watching the scene. And maybe it's different when you are writing a novel because you are thinking of it in terms of being read. But films are only consumed one way - through the eyes and the ears.
Supernatural films allow you to bend the rules of time and space - that's really fun, especially for screenwriters who often get shot down for logic reasons.
I just try to write literally what I love. That's usually the barometer that I use. As trite as it sounds, I'm like, 'what would I want to see? What would I be excited about?'
When I was a kid, 'Robocop' to me was just good guys and bad guys.
I love, and I've always loved, contained sci-fi films that utilize practical effects. I feel like the human eye can tell when something is actually in the frame and when it was inserted digitally later.
I feel like if you boil supernatural ghost films down to their core essence, they're really about death.
It's a weird little anomaly about horror films in that the more money and noise you have, the less scary it gets.
I think the way to create a lot of terror in a haunted house film is to have a bunch of people who have no idea what's happening to them, and you sort of live the movie through their eyes.
Saw' definitely had an edge to it that wasn't American.
So when I look back at 'Saw' and 'Insidious,' I just think, 'Wow. Both of those films went way past what we ever could've dreamt for them' and it makes me genuinely thankful, like every single day, once a day, even if it's just for thirty seconds, sitting in my car, I have a moment where I'm like, I can't believe I'm here.
After 'Saw,' we got offered every horror remake under the sun, and I was just always thinking, 'I don't see how this could be interesting for me.'
If you go back and watch 'Saw,' I was very young. I'd never really done anything before.
You know you've have a good idea when you're lying awake at night going 'someone else is going to take it, I just know it!'
I've actually written a children's film called 'The Myth,' which you could say is like a big 'Harry Potter'-esque fantasy for kids, and that's a film I would love to see get made. That's a dream project of mine.
I do try and keep my scripts quite economical.
A lot of times when a film is a success, the fans of that film take ownership of it - it becomes their property.
I couldn't believe that people went to see 'Saw,' that people actually lined up.
