Conjuring 2 director James Wan talks horror, creative control, Aquaman and Furious 7

AUSSIE director James Wan is the go-to studio guy for Furious 7 and Aquaman but he wasn’t even sure if he would return to make The Conjuring 2.

IN filmmaking, as in life, sometimes you don’t know what you have until it’s gone.

Ever since Aussie director James Wan burst on to the filmmaking scene with Saw, the 2004 horror hit that made more than $120 million from its $1.5 million budget, he’s been able to largely do things his own way.

While he declined to return to direct any of the six Saw sequels (he remained an executive producer) he was intimately involved in the creation of two of the more successful horror franchises of recent years, co-writing and directing Insidious and its sequel with his long-time friend and collaborator Leigh Whannell, and directing the 2013 smash The Conjuring, which took $350 million at the global box office.

REVIEW: How the Conjuring 2 rates at the box office

Another world: James Wan and Vin Diesel on the set of the hugely successful Furious 7.

Such huge successes — and profits — don’t go unnoticed in Hollywood, and Wan was tapped to take over the Fast and Furious juggernaut for last year’s seventh chapter. And while Wan took Vin Diesel’s long-running motoring franchise to new heights, its $2 billion take makes it the sixth highest grossing film ever, it was also clear to the director that he was very much stepping into a world that was already well established. And while he says he learned a lot from Fast 7, a critical as well as commercial hit, it also made him realise how much he wanted to be the master of his own destiny for his next project.

“When I went off to do Fast and Furious 7, that wasn’t mine, so creatively I had to play by the rules that were already set up by other people,” Wan says.

“That was also a big part of why I decided to come back to do Conjuring 2 — it’s my world, I created it and I knew the studio was going to support me in the film I was going to make. I didn’t really appreciate how much creative freedom I had until I didn’t have it as much.”

But how will that play out with his next movie, Aquaman, which will be one of the major pillars of the DC Extended Universe that was kicked off earlier this year by Batman v Superman: Dawn Of Justice? According to Wan, who’s very cagey on specifics, it’s the best of both worlds.

Director Wan with Conjuring 2 stars Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson, who return as real-life spook-hunters Ed and Lorraine Warren. Picture: Supplied.

“Here’s the thing with Aquaman and it’s a tricky one because I can’t speak too much about it because it’s so early on,” he says. “But I will say this; there are elements that are already in place because it is already somewhat established. But in a lot of ways they have actually been very cool with me and they have wanted me to make the movie I want to make and there are a lot of things I want to do that will be me.

“I get to tell the story I want to tell, create the world I want to create and that is a lot for a filmmaker to sink his teeth into, especially for something that is part of a cinematic universe. It’s actually pretty cool, knowing how strict it could be.”

Even though it felt like it was his baby, Wan says he was initially reluctant to make The Conjuring 2, which like the original follows a haunted house case investigated by real-life spook hunters Ed and Lorraine Warren (played again by Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga). But with the first one having been so successful, the lure of a bigger budget and more resources, not to mention revisiting the characters he loved, proved to appealing to resist.

“I was debating with myself ‘should I do this? People really liked the first movie, do I really want to come back and screw it all up?’ But then there were budget factors that made me want to come back and when I started production, the cloud of the first movie really hung over me and I knew I had to really live up to the expectation of the first one. I put a lot of pressure on myself to tell the best story I can — I didn’t want to settle for anything less because the first Conjuring really deserved a sequel that can at least come close to it.”

Wan on the set of the film The Conjuring 2 working his magic. Picture: Supplied.

Wan also admits that it’s not just his long-felt love of the horror genre that drives him, but also fact that scary movies give directors the chance to show off their entire bag of tricks.

“The horror genre is such a director’s medium because you get to showcase the way you use the camera, the way you use music and sound design, the way you use lighting, the way you edit the film,” says Wan, who studied film at RMIT University, Melbourne. “So it actually comes from a very calculated place as to why the horror genre is a very effective one for filmmakers starting out.”

Having agreed to make another Conjuring film, Wan then set himself the challenge of not repeating the scares of the first film. Of all the Warrens’ supernatural cases, the one that appealed the most was the well-documented Enfield haunting, set in a nondescript London council house in the late 1970s.

“Whereas the first movie was a big, old, isolated scary house in the middle of nowhere, the second one takes place in a council home in a very ordinary suburb on the outskirts of London,” Wan says. “It doesn’t feel like a typical, Gothic mansion haunted house you are used to seeing.

Wan with Lorraine Warren, who was a consultant on The Conjuring 2. Picture: Supplied.

It’s actually a very boring looking location and that made it exciting for me to take something that seems so normal and mundane and make it moody and sinister and creepy.”

In addition to having Lorraine Warren along as a consultant, Wan also met the Hodgson family, whose real-life story became the basis of the second The Conjuring 2. The strange happenings — some of which were thoroughly debunked — were widely reported in the press at the time, and Wan and the actors also heard the tapes which purport to be of youngest daughter Janet Hodgson being possessed by the deceased previous owner of the house.

“I got to meet with Janet, Margaret and Billy very early on when we were still working on the script,” Wan says. “I really wanted to get an insight into who they are and what happened to them back then and see how they are after all these years.

“It was an eye-opening experience for me and I was somewhat self-conscious when the Hodgsons actually showed up on set with how the real people would take to this movie we were making about them. I know it was a very surreal and emotional experience for them as well.”

The Conjuring 2 is now showing.

Originally published as Conjuring 2 director James Wan talks horror, creative control, Aquaman and Furious 7