Insidious and The Conjuring star Patrick Wilson says ghosts fascinate rather than frighten him

PATRICK Wilson has had some of his biggest successes in horror movies. And while he says he’s attracted to darker roles, ghosts fascinate rather than frighten him.

AFTER making four horror movies with Australian director James Wan, actor Patrick Wilson says he’s well and truly open to the things that go bump in the night.

Wilson and Wan have found success with two Insidious films, as well as the 2013 hit The Conjuring, which spectacularly transcended the usually niche horror genre by taking more than $350 million at the box office.

In its sequel, which opens today, Wilson and Vera Farmiga reprise their roles as real-life spook hunters Ed and Lorraine Warren, who are this time trying to get to the bottom of one of the most well-documented haunted house cases ever, which took place in a nondescript suburban London house.

Wilson says that since he took the role and started to research the cases — studying old footage, reading books and listening to tapes purporting to be of a young girl possessed by a malevolent spirit — he’s fascinated rather than frightened by the prospect of the supernatural.

“I think like Ed I am going to think of every scientific reason this is happening,” Wilson says. “It doesn’t frighten me. If someone says they saw a ghost I don’t get scared I get interested. I tell my wife that and she gets freaked out but I think ‘why does it always have to be a bad ghost?’”

The Enfield poltergeist case, upon which The Conjuring 2 is based, has been called “the English Amityville” in reference to arguably the most notorious haunted house of them all. The Warrens investigated both cases for real — and despite the documentation and unexplained phenomena, both gave rise to as many sceptics as they did true believers. Wilson, who met with Lorraine Warren, a consultant on both Conjuring films, says that he doesn’t have to be either to play her husband.

“The one thing you don’t want to do when you are playing anybody who is real is you don’t want to judge them,” Wilson says. “That’s not my job to ask Lorraine ‘do you really believe that? Are you sure? Are you lying?’. That does me no good. If she says to me with a straight face ‘this is what I saw and this is what I did’ then you go ‘OK’. I am not a reporter or trying to debunk a case — I’m taking her at her word. Of course there are sceptics — if two people get in a car accident you are going to get two different stories — so of course you are going to have varying opinions of the paranormal.”

The versatile Wilson, who was nominated for Golden Globe this year for his lead role in season two of TV hit Fargo, admits he has always been drawn to darker fare. He played a paedophile in Hard Candy, an adulterer in Little Children, a possessed killer in Insidious — even the superhero he played in Watchman was a troubled, impotent burnout. But far from being a tortured soul trying to exorcise his demons, the affable Wilson enjoys walking darker paths precisely because they are so foreign to his everyday life.

“I have a pretty good life,” he chuckles. “My parents are still together, which is amazing for the number of adulterers I have played, but I get fascinated by the dark side, of course. I always have. I love light stuff too but every now and again I like to push myself and find something that really challenges me or makes me feel uncomfortable. That’s usually the role I take.”

It’s the same vicarious thrills, says Wilson, that led to the first Conjuring film being such a hit at the box office and the reason that moviegoers are prepared to part with their hard-earned cash for the privilege of being scared out of their wits.

“I think the more that our lives are controlled, the more that what we do each day is so programmed and set and timed — and everybody has every phone and device and knows exactly what time it is, what the weather is, where they are, what the latest news is and what Donald Trump just said — and then you go to a horror movie that turns you upside down and surprises you,” he says. “How many surprises do you have left in life — short of having children? I think that’s a large part of it — people like to give over to somebody else controlling them for a bit.”

The Conjuring 2 opens today

Originally published as Insidious and The Conjuring star Patrick Wilson says ghosts fascinate rather than frighten him