It doesn’t take much to scare filmmaker James Wan, creator of the “Saw,” “Insidious” and “The Conjuring” horror franchises.
“People say to me, ‘You make a lot of scary movies, (so) you must not be afraid of anything,” the Australian filmmaker said Thursday at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival’s final Cinema Cinema Café panel discussion at the Filmmaker Lodge. “I’m afraid of everything. I’m scared of ghosts. I’m scared of the supernatural. I believe in this. It’s in my Asian culture, my Malaysian culture. Growing up, I heard a lot of superstitious stories and stuff, so I’m a pretty superstitious guy, and that’s what I try to do.”
Wan culls horror film topics and scenes from his heritage, he said during the discussion — a live recoding of Elijah Wood and Daniel Noah’s “Visitations” podcast.
“With (things like) ‘Insidious’ or ‘The Conjuring,’ I try to remember what it was that scared me about certain things, and a lot of my scare scenes are actually based on the ghost stories that have been told to me throughout my life,” he said. “I try to put them on screen and try to share with the world things that scare me.”
During the discussion, which was also part of the Sundance Film Festival’s Legacy programming that celebrated its 43 years in Park City, Wan, at Wood and Noah’s prompting, made a list of his artistic influences.
Filmmaker Steven Spielberg is at the top of Wan’s list.
“I’m GenX, and growing up in the ’80s and ’90s, the biggest artist/filmmaker to me was Steven Spielberg,” he said. “If I had to put my finger on which of his movies inspired me the most, got me most excited and (helped) me realize that there was a person behind the films was ‘Jaws.’”
While Wan loved the great-white-shark thriller, he pointed to Spielberg’s 1982 ghost story, “Poltergeist,” as the film that inspired him to make horror films.
“I think that’s the movie I can blame for my creepy doll fascination,” the filmmaker said about his trademark of featuring possessed inanimate toys in his movies. “It was basically the first haunted-house movie that did not take place in a classic, gothic mansion. It was in suburbia. It was a normal home we could have grown up in during the ’80s and ’90s.”
The idea that something could viciously interrupt the safe comfort of a home stuck with Wan.
“And (those) scary things don’t have to be ghosts,” he said. “Classic home invasion is terrifying. It’s terrifying to know something can just come into your house and pull you away.”
Once Wan saw “Poltergeist,” he couldn’t get enough of horror, action and exploitation films, especially those made by Australian filmmakers such as George Miller.
“I grew up on a diet of VHS movies — the more schlocky, the better,” he said. “But it’s really different (in Australia). We don’t really make the kind of genre films that America makes, so to speak. But George Miller is a big idol of ours. We’re huge fans of what he has done and what he has done for the Australian film industry as well with the whole ‘Mad Max’ series.”
Wan also pointed to the 1984 film “Razorback” as one of his go-to films.
“It’s basically ‘Jaws’ with a killer pig movie set in the Outback of Australia,” he said. “It’s directed by Russell Mulcahy, who is another one of my heroes as well. He went on to become a massive director in the MTV music video generation. He did Bonnie Tyler’s ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’ and some of the great Duran Duran videos. And ‘Video Killed the Radio Star’ by The Buggles, the very first video on MTV.”
Another of Wan’s influences isn’t a filmmaker, nor a person.
“I’m a big fan of the power of sound design,” he said. “I think the key is knowing what to use, when to use and when not to use (something). The biggest complaint of horror movies today is the overuse of sound.”
In addition to sound, Wan is enamored by lighting, especially the type of lighting captured in paintings from the Renaissance, which he said is usually depicted from one source.
“(It’s about) where it (comes) from one direction, and everything just fades into black,” he said. “My movies are driven by the visual, and the look is very important to me. So, what I look for in a cinematographer, a director of photography, is how good they are with lighting.”
Wan referred to his 2010 film, “Insidious,” which takes place in real and fantasy worlds, as an example of how he uses lighting.
“When I’m in the real world, I try to use as much natural light as I can, and in the fantasy world I try to go with the one-light sources,” he said. “That can literally be just an actor holding up a lantern.”
Comic books are another of Wan’s influences.
“I read a lot growing up in my teen years, and I don’t read them much these days because I’m too busy to get into them,” he said. “But I learned a lot from comic books, manga and anime — all of that stuff that shaped who I am from a visual standpoint.”
Comic books taught the filmmaker about shot-framing, the economy of storytelling and storyboarding, which shows each scene in comic book-like panels.
“You have to tell a succinct story in a short amount of space, and I think that helped me understand how to focus on the importance of storytelling,” he said. “I did draw comics when I was a kid, and I storyboarded my earlier movies, until I could hire a storyboard artist.”
The last of Wan’s influences is Asian cinema.
“I consumed everything from horror films to Hong Kong (action) movies,” he said. “I grew up (watching) John Woo, Chow Young Fat and Jackie Chan.”
Wan said one of the biggest events of his professional life was premiering “Saw” at the Egyptian Theatre during the 2004 Sundance Film Festival.
“It was the first time we played the movie for an actual paying audience, and even though we were nervous as hell, being here was a dream come true,” he said. “This was something that (screenwriter) Leigh Whannell and I had dreamt about our whole life. So, to get the chance to do it, we couldn’t be more thankful to Sundance for the opportunity.”