Top 217 Quotes & Sayings by James Wan
Explore popular quotes and sayings by an Australian producer James Wan.
Last updated on April 14, 2025.
I love 'MacGyver.' I do!
'Insidious 2' is a direct continuation of the first movie. We literally pick up from where we left off at the end of the first film. And whereas the first movie is a twist on the haunted house genre, the second movie is a twist on the classic domestic thriller.
There's something very cool about that indie spirit that I try to hang on to even now with the bigger films that I'm working on.
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.
I use myself as the barometer to gauge what is scary.
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.
I'm a big movie fan, and I want to make movies in every genre. I want to make my romantic comedy one day.
If you care about the characters, then whatever scary thing happens to them, you feel it even more.
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.
With all the crap that's going on around the world, you kind of want to do what you can to protect the ones you love.
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.
If you don't do the suspense correctly, then your jump scares are not going to work.
I didn't direct any of the 'Saw' sequels, but people thought I did.
'Poltergeist' was really the film that really scarred, but fascinated, me with puppets and dolls, clowns and stuff like that.
All my movies are about people with some ideology, but guess what? It never works out.
I've always said if I had to pinpoint what's more important in a scary movie, the soundscape or the visuals, I'd pick the sound.
With 'Insidious 2,' I wanted to push a potential franchise in the direction I thought it should go in.
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.
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.
'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.
I always felt that what is scary is actually hearing someone tell you what they think they see. That sense of invisibility makes things a lot scarier, since your imagination tends to fill in the gaps.
When you create those characters that people love and care about and put them in a dark hallway, already the audience is on edge, and they feel empathy for that character. Then it's up to me to decide what jumps out in that hallway. So I think laying that foundation of strong characters and strong story is the most important thing in a horror film.
I love to be scared in the safety of a movie theater. It is like a thrill ride; like a roller-coaster ride.
The size of the budget doesn't make that much of a difference because the kind of issues I have on a low budget film I have on a big budget film as well, but they're just much bigger.
If I have free time, I want to go to the beach, walk around a shopping mall, go grocery shopping. Live a little bit of life.
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.
The size of the budget doesn't make that much of a difference because the kind of issues I have on a low budget film I I have on a big budget film as well, but they're just much bigger.
'The Exorcist' is one of the finest movies ever made, and it just so happens to be a scary movie.
If you're great, I want to work with you.
I definitely love to be scared. It draws the primal side out of you.
I'm a big fan of suspense and tension filmmaking, and that was my goal with 'The Conjuring.'
Not many people remember this, but in the first 'Death Wish' film, Charles Bronson doesn't actually go after the people that hurt his family: he just goes after every punk. He just blows them all away.
I guess, deep down, there's a dark side to us. I guess that's why movie fans really love the revenge drama. We like to go into dark movie theaters and fantasize.
You know what's funny is, when I made 'Saw,' I got accused of being a fascist; when I made 'Insidious,' I got accused of being godless, and now I made the 'Conjuring' films, and I'm accused of being too much God.
I kind of joke that creating franchises is a lot like directing pilot episodes of TV series. You set a look and feel and kind of pass it on.
I took a break from horror; I made three ghost movies back-to-back-to-back.
I see my actors as my collaborators.
'The Conjuring' was a massive success, and honestly, it set the bar quite high. So I was nervous about making the sequel, and I wasn't sure if it will still have the same impact as the first one did. But that's what moved me to make the sequel.
I grew up loving X-Men, Spider-Man and Batman.
'Death Sentence' really is a throwback to the '70s style revenge drama with moments of action. It's like a contemporary 'Death Wish' with a much more thriller style storyline, but the action scenes I shot very much in the style of '70s films like 'The French Connection.'
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.
I loved 'Jaws.' I think that is not really a horror film, but it made me afraid of the ocean for a very long time.
For me, the sound design and the musical score is a big part of what makes scary movies work.
What I realized is that it doesn't matter how big or small your film is. The actual filmmaking process, the actual storytelling, it's still the same thing. It's still all about creating characters that you like and creating moments that get you excited or get you tense.
You may not quite understand the cinematic tricks that go behind the making of a film, but as long as you feel it, I think that's the important thing.
'Poltergeist' was really the film that really scarred but fascinated me with puppets and dolls, clowns, and stuff like that. I've always been afraid of clowns, and then my fear of puppets came around, and 'Poltergeist' was the perfect combination to scare me with a clown doll.
People are so used to seeing John Goodman as a lovable dad or the quirky characters he played in the Coen Brothers films.
There are expectations with sequels, and people want them to be bigger and better than the prequel.
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.
When I am making a sequel, it needs to be different from what you have already seen. Yet, it needs to maintain a certain discipline so that people still associate it with the prequel.
Isn't it crazy to think that we've explored space more than we have explored the depths of our ocean? That just fires up my imagination about potential sea monsters and cool creatures, that kind of stuff.
I believe in spirits. I believe in faith. I believe in spirituality. I believe in aliens as well.
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.
I remembered a long time ago when 'A League of Their Own' came out, and they had the opening sequence with an older Geena Davis. We all just thought it was amazing, but you find out it actually wasn't Geena Davis; it wasn't makeup. It was basically finding an actress that looked like her, and then Geena just dubbed her voice.
It's pretty scary to know how quickly time flies.
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.
I love what I did in 'Death Sentence,' but that was a low budget action film.
I grew up loving X-Men, Spider-Man and Batman. Those are obviously the key big ones, but there's always something kind of cool about Aquaman still, the idea of creating a huge world that is on our planet.
When I was a kid, my grandfather used to watch Bollywood films. There's a lot of colour and vibrancy to the Indian films.
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