James Wan

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

I grew up loving X-Men, Spider-Man and Batman.

If you care about the characters, then whatever scary thing happens to them, you feel it even more.

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 didn't direct any of the 'Saw' sequels, but people thought I did.

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

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.

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

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.

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 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.

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

'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 see my actors as my collaborators.

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.

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.

'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.'

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

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.

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.

If you're great, I want to work with you.

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'm a big fan of suspense and tension filmmaking, and that was my goal with 'The Conjuring.'

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.

Critics tend to be very hard on the horror genre.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I think what 'Saw' did was really open up a huge branch of lots of these other movies that ultimately retroactively gave the first 'Saw' somewhat of a negative reputation.

I'd love to be a filmmaker and look back and be like, 'Ah, man, we were part of that whole '80s video nasty thing!'

It's pretty scary to know how quickly time flies.

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.

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 loved 'Jaws.' I think that is not really a horror film, but it made me afraid of the ocean for a very long time.

If I can get the audience to connect with the characters emotionally - and they love who they are, they love the larger-than-life situation that they're in, but most of all get the audience invested in the characters - then I always feel like I can sort of put them in the most outrageous circumstances, and the audience is okay to go with that.

I love what I did in 'Death Sentence,' but that was a low budget action film.

'Poltergeist' was really the film that really scarred, but fascinated, me with puppets and dolls, clowns and stuff like that.

We live in a world that relies on technology.

I'm a big John Woo fan.

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

When I was a kid, my grandfather used to watch Bollywood films. There's a lot of colour and vibrancy to the Indian films.

I use myself as a measuring yardstick, and so if I come up with an idea that really scares me, then I'd like to think that people out there would feel the same way as well.

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.

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.

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

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.

I'm a big movie fan, and I want to make movies in every genre. I want to make my romantic comedy one day.

I love 'MacGyver.' I do!

I took a break from horror; I made three ghost movies back-to-back-to-back.