James Wan

I always try to better myself with every movie I make. I don't take anything sitting back, and so I try to learn from every film I make and carry that onto the next movie because I think it's important as a filmmaker to keep growing with each film, and I think I am growing with each movie.

I want to start off making the kinds of films that I loved growing up as a kid. Fun horror films that are scary but at the same time, after you finish the movie, it leaves you excited to see more.

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.

When you conceive the scene, you go, 'That is scary, right?' When you shoot it, a lot of times you're not quite sure. Hopefully what you can shoot is what your conception is.

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.

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.

Saw' was good and bad. It was good in that it gave me a career start, but it was also negative in that it really marginalized me as a filmmaker.

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.

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.

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

I think the 'Saw' universe, the 'Saw' brand, is too big to just let it just sit there on a shelf.

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.