Top 111 James Wan Quotes

I guess I have a fascination with the idea of puppeteering. I think, in a lot of ways, directing is puppeteering. I guess I see a lot of analogies between what puppeteers and filmmakers do.

I think Mel Gibson could make ‘Passion of the Christ’ because he really believed in it and gave it his all.

If I have to point to something specific with the way I move my camera, I love to do it with a wide lens. I like to show you as much of the space as I can, even if I’m following a character.

I think before ‘Saw’ came along, there really wasn’t a movie franchise that actually went out there and said, ‘We’re going to come out with one every year during Halloween and make that our trademark.’

So many movies get made, and so many go to VOD, which is a market I admire.

‘Saw,’ in many ways, was like my student film. The first crappy student film you don’t really want people to see.

Not many people realize this, but I’m a really squeamish guy. When I watch other horror films that are really over-the-top with their blood and guts, I cannot watch it.

‘Saw’ really came from that want, the aspiration to make a feature film on our own.

The key is to constantly keep the audience surprised. If they feel like something is going to happen, or they think from an educational standpoint that something is about to happen because of all the moving parts, it is your job to break that expectation and show the audience something different.

Favorite movie of all time? I hate being asked… that’s like being asked, ‘What’s your favorite song?’

I love Carpenter, I love Craven – these are all the classics – the Romeros of the world, but I think the biggest influence on me as a storyteller and as a filmmaker is actually Steven Spielberg. I love that even though Steven isn’t known for being a horror director, he started out his career making scary movies.

Having such a diverse cast and crew is what makes the ‘Fast & Furious’ films so unique to all the other studio tent pole films that just have a very singular look to them.

I can make any kind of movies. I can put up with any kind of situation. And I can tackle them.

It’s actually smarter to make a dumb film.

I believe in spirits. I believe in faith. I believe in spirituality. I believe in aliens as well.

For me, the sound design and the musical score is a big part of what makes scary movies work.

I think I should have made ‘Dead Silence’ as an independent movie.

I love a ghost story. I think they affect me more than other people that are much more skeptical than I am. I think that it’s good that I do buy into them to some degree.

‘Poltergeist’ was the film that scarred me for life. I saw it at such a young age – 5 or 6 years old – and it has one of the creepiest doll sequences with the clown, and ever since then, I’ve just been fascinated by dolls.

Up until ‘Fast and Furious 7,’ every movie I’ve made has been a film that I’ve created, franchises that I’ve created.

Geoff Johns is super talented, super smart. Part of what got me excited about the Aquaman character is his re-envisioning of Aquaman, the character, with ‘The New 52.’

I think you cannot be too complacent. I think that’s dangerous, and you cannot take anything for granted.

I hope people will like ‘The Conjuring 2’ because I think it is a very natural and organic progression of the first movie.

Still one of my favorite movies is the original ‘The Haunting.’ I love that style.

Language-wise, my mom and dad’s dialect, they’re pretty obscure. It’s Chinese, but not your traditional Chinese, like Cantonese or Mandarin. It wasn’t something that I got to use very much growing up. We eventually just spoke English around the house.

Supernatural movies generally have a much more brooding pace. If you look at films like ‘The Sixth Sense’ or ‘The Others,’ it’s more building up the characters and building up the situation as opposed to just opening with a big action set piece.

One of the things I learned very early on is you need to cast the kids for the characters you want them to play. They need to be who they are, right? If you want a loud, boisterous kid character, you need to find that kid.

My first film out of the gate was financially so successful that I guess, being in Hollywood, you get kind of put into a certain box.

A lot of these types of films – the vigilante or revenge drama – were so popular in the ’70s because there was a feeling in the culture of loss of control.

The very first movie that I ever saw in a theater was ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.’

I never realized how much I cherished having creative freedom.

I love my genre films, but I think when I get older, the way I tell it will be very different to how I told it when I was in my mid-twenties, which is how old I was when I made the first ‘Saw.’

I like the ‘Twilight’ films.

I think that the first ‘Saw’ was really more of a psychological film about two people stuck in a room, and the traps and games that fans seem to embrace so much now were quite a small portion of the film.

I think you kind of need to acknowledge that the reason why sequels do well is because people that loved the first one come back.

I like to think if something scares me, then there’s a very good chance an audience will feel the same way. The key is creating scenarios that people can relate to.

No one knows how much we went through to finish ‘Furious 7.’

Ask anyone, and they’ll tell you that most of the good horror films made in the U.S. are indie films. You might get ‘The Ring’ or ‘The Others,’ but most are independently produced.

People are so used to seeing John Goodman as a loveable dad or the quirky characters he played in the Coen Brothers films.

We think craft is important, and the irony has always been that horror may be disregarded by critics, but often they are the best-made movies you’re going to find in terms of craft. You can’t scare people if they see the seams.

No one pretty much tells me what kind of horror films to make.

There’s a reason why Smellovision has never really taken off. And I think it’s a good thing.

We all live in some kind of home, so the idea that our home could be invested with a supernatural entity is kind of frightening, I think.

All my movies are about people with some ideology, but guess what? It never works out.

My low-budget films, more than anything, taught me that you’ve got to create cool, likable characters and great stories because, if you don’t, it doesn’t matter how cool it might look – no one is going to care about it.

It’s very difficult to get an audience to be terrified of what’s going on. Think about it: You’re in a room with so many other people, so for them to be terrified and to care about what’s going on on-screen takes a lot of work.

I think crafting a new, effective horror movie is not just about when night falls and things get scary. It’s about setting a tone and mood that permeates throughout the entire movie. So even during the daytime, things are never quite safe-feeling.

With ‘Insidious 2,’ I wanted to push a potential franchise in the direction I thought it should go in.

That’s the problem: when you make movies, I find that I never have time to go to the movies and enjoy movies like I used to because I’m so movied out, right? I’m so filmed out that the last thing that I wanna do is, with the little spare time that I have, is stick in a dark room and watch more stuff on the screen.

I love the idea of being the underdog, coming in with a take on this underdog character and completely blow people’s expectations away. Like, ‘Oh, you thought he was going to be a wimpy character? No no no.’

If you come down to it, there’s only a handful of worlds that action films live in. You have your car chases, your gun fights, and your fights.

We live in a world that relies on technology.

There are expectations with sequels, and people want them to be bigger and better than the prequel.

Science fiction is a big, big love of mine. I would love to get into that at some point.

It kind of irks me that the studio films still have to be so safe even though they don’t really cost as much to make.

Whether it’s a popcorn movie or some really intellectual sociopolitical movie, I think to some degree they’re all influenced by the social climate that we’re living in.

What the Internet has done is made it easier to stay in touch with people, and social networking has helped me career-wise by helping me keep in touch with my fans.

It all comes down to what is best for those particular genres, and if you believe in the stories that you’re telling and the characters that you like that you want to tell those stories with, you can pretty much apply it to any genre.

I love Sam Peckinpah.

I always say, what is cool for me with ‘The Conjuring’, is it’s not just another scary set piece or another scary case; it’s more about what I can do with the characters of Ed and Lorraine Warren.

I am my own worst critic, and I look at ‘Death Sentence’ now, and I go, ‘Oh wow, I have really come a long way.’ In terms of a filmmaker, I feel like my filmmaking language has really matured.

For me and my films, I want my audience to experience cinema in its full glory. It’s not just visual, it’s audio as well. It’s emotional, and I want you to be engaged with not just the scene but with the characters.

Critics tend to be very hard on the horror genre.