James Wan made Saw for around a million dollars and it launched a franchise, though the film itself is closer to a locked-room thriller than to the gore its sequels became known for. His actual strength is patience: long slow camera moves toward a space where something might be.
Insidious and The Conjuring built two more franchises on the same principle, using period detail, practical staging and very few jump cuts. The Conjuring in particular is old-fashioned in construction, which is why it works.
He also directs large-scale action, Furious 7 and Aquaman, and moves between the two modes without appearing to change gear.
James WanAquaman and the Lost Kingdom (2023) rates 2 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. The last film of a continuity that had already been cancelled, released into an audience that knew it, with a villain whose plan is to…
James WanJames Wan's haunted house story where a comatose boy's spirit is trapped in a dimensional space called the Further. Patrick Wilson plays Josh Lambert.
James WanTwo men wake chained in a filthy bathroom and discover they are pawns in a sadistic puzzle designed by the Jigsaw killer. Saw is James Wan's 2004 American horror film depicting two men who wake chained in a filthy bathroom…
James WanPatrick Wilson plays Ed Warren. The Conjuring is one of the most commercially successful contemporary supernatural horror productions and the foundational document of the Conjuring Universe franchise that has dominated mid-2010s through early-2020s horror cinema.
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