An interview with Insidious director James Wan and scriptwriter-actor Leigh Whannell

* This piece first appeared in The Guardian Guide on Saturday 23 April 2011

Even outside the horror circuit, you wouldn't read an article about the four Scream movies that didn't mention director Wes Craven or scriptwriter Kevin Williamson. You wouldn't read an article about the Halloween movies – one groundbreaking original and nine more, including sequels and remakes – that didn't mention John Carpenter. But it's quite possible that you've read about the Saw movies, all seven, with their increasingly outré, gory set-pieces, without having heard a single word about their creators: director James Wan and scriptwriter-actor Leigh Whannell.

"It's nuts!" laughs Whannell. Both 34, he and Wan are the last unsung impresarios of horror, no mean feat in a genre which claims Rob Zombie as an auteur. But these two didn't set out to take that world by storm. Though without them, Saw has become a multimillion-dollar byword for trashy, amoral, multiplex fodder, their first instalment – a far cry from the six that followed – is really a neat indie horror thriller. They certainly don't bristle at it, but then Wan and Whannell are now cheerfully inured to the phrase "torture porn".

"People who've seen the original Saw don't usually use that term," notes Wan. "They'd maybe use it to describe the sequels and the imitators. I was approached to do the sequel, but I felt that I'd already told the story I wanted to tell and I didn't want to repeat myself."

With their third film together – after the little-seen puppet chiller Dead Silence – the hip, funny Melbourne-based duo are trying to reclaim some of the ground that's been denied them. Produced by the backers of the Paranormal Activity franchise, Insidious sees Wan and Whannell returning to their low-budget roots with a tale of a suburban couple (Rose Byrne and Patrick Wilson) who are blighted by ghosts when their little boy falls into a coma. Says Wan: "I took some time off, and I knew that I wanted to come back with a movie that Leigh and I had complete creative control over. So I said to him, 'Look, we've always loved ghost stories. Let's write a really small, contained film… but one that is fucking scary.'

"We didn't want to make just another haunted house film," he continues. "In the same way Saw was a serial killer movie with a twist, what Leigh and I wanted to do was take a well-known subgenre in the world of horror films and turn that on its head."

Made for just $1m, Insidious doesn't reinvent the wheel but it does deliver clever and effective shocks, with a spooky twist that Wan expressly asks to be withheld. Like the original Saw, which most people forget debuted at the Sundance film festival in 2004, it's both an exercise in limitation (a single location), and a testament to their fertile imaginations. Asked about that franchise-spawning milestone, though, even now the pair still can't seem to believe it.

"Well," says Whannell, "I guess the end result exceeded our goal. Don't you think?"

"Our goal?!" laughs Wan. "What goal?"

"If I remember correctly," says Whannell, "it was just to shoot it and have a good-looking demo reel. We never went around saying, 'Hey, won't this be cool when it gets released on 2,000 screens in the States?' Our goal was very modest. We were like the guy whose dream in life is just to be an understudy on a Broadway show and then he suddenly lands a lead role. That was us."

"So what Leigh is saying is that we're lucky fuckers," says Wan.

For those that don't know, the first Saw film introduced the world to Jigsaw (Tobin Bell), a crazed inventor who puts not-so-innocent citizens in extreme life-or-death situations. And, as was the case with the Nightmare On Elm Street movies, the ensuing franchise turned a shady sadist into a glib antihero.

"A lot of people talk to us thinking that we came up with Jigsaw first and worked back from there," says Whannell. "But the first idea we had was of two people trapped in a room. And a great twist at the end. That's all we had. So when I went off to write the script I suddenly thought, 'All right, now I've got to figure out how they ended up there.' So I was racking my brain, thinking, 'Who would possibly do this?' And I hit upon the idea of somebody with terminal cancer who had lost their mind and was subjecting people to a literal version of the short time limit that he had on his life. But we never called him a serial killer. He was a psychopath, obviously…"

"…But he never punished people for their sins," adds Wan. "He's not one of those killers. He goes after people who don't appreciate their lives. I think some of that was lost along the way. But we can't really bitch about it, because we did step away from it."

So the question must be asked: will Insidious start another franchise, this time with its creators' names very much to the fore? "Leigh and I don't talk about sequels," laughs Wan. "I know that sounds weird coming from the guys who created the Saw franchise. But we never intended the first Saw film to have a sequel – capitalism dictated that! Which is cool with us, by the way, because now there are dolls and toys and even a rollercoaster, which, as film fans, we love."

As for recognition, though, they won't say no. "I want people to be able to recognise a Wan-Whannell film," beams Whannell. "I want people to get to the point – like a Tim Burton movie or a John Woo movie – where they can just tell."

"And we've started to get there," says Wan. "I think."