Today, April 1, 2022, marks ELEVEN YEARS since the release of James Wan‘s Insidious, Wan and writer Leigh Whannell‘s third horror collaboration in the wake of Saw and Dead Silence. Much like Saw several years prior, Insidious proved to be a massive hit at the box office, further catapulting Wan’s career and launching a franchise that to date includes four movies.
With Insidious 5 on the way soon, James Wan has taken a minute to celebrate the 11th birthday of the Insidious franchise, writing up a nice little retrospective over on Facebook.
Wan writes, “After Saw, I wanted to shake the “torture-porn” label and do something less graphic and more atmospheric. Being huge fans of ghost stories and haunted houses, Leigh Whannell and I wanted to do our own version of those films, and felt we could make it for very little money to retain complete creative control. We felt the most important thing the film needed was to be scary, and so we dove into the creepy world of astral projection (a subject matter that fascinates me) and dimension-traveling.
“Initially, Leigh had named the script The Further, but I convinced him that the one-word title Insidious was a “cool sounding word” for a movie about ghostly possession by parasitic entities from another dimension. He agreed.
“Leigh wrote a fantastically efficient script that was scary as well as emotional (this would go on to inspire my approach for The Conjuring), and attracted Jason Blum to the project. It was the first time we collaborated together (along with Oren Peli), and the start of Blumhouse. It was a great experience.
“For such a low budget flick, we were very fortunate to put together a great crew and a terrific cast — the amazing Lin Shaye, Rose Byrne, Patrick Wilson (this guy!), Ty Simpkins and Barbara Hershey. We shot the whole movie in 24 days, which is 6 more than Saw! I edited it at home on my home computer (not unlike what I’m doing right now on Aquaman 2 but with a little bit more money) with Final Cut. My assistant editor, Dennis, was set up in the breakfast area, with wires running from his computer pass the kitchen to the computer Kirk and I were working on. It was truly harking back to my student filmmaking days.
“And so here we are 11 years later, our little movie has become a popular horror franchise, and Patrick Wilson is about to travel back into the Further with Insidious 5!
“Long live the Further.”
Check out some behind the scenes photos Wan shared with his memories below.