James Wan believes horror movies keep "saving our industry".
The Conjuring director was inspired by the great genre filmmakers of the 1980s and 1990s and is proud that the ongoing popularity of horror films has continued to bolster the box office at a time when the cinematic experience has been under threat by streaming.
Speaking at the Produced by Conference on the Universal Lot in Los Angeles, he said: “I’ve been a horror fan since I was a kid, and so naturally I grew up on a steady diet of horror movies through the ’80s and ’90s, inspired by great filmmakers like John Carpenter and Wes Craven.
“I look at them and think, ‘You know what? I kind of want to do what they did.’ Today we kind of mimic that model. And here we are. I say this to anyone who will listen: The horror genre keeps saving our industry.”
His Blumhouse-Atomic Monster collaborator Jordan Blum praised the work of content creators Curry Barker, 26, and Kane Parsons, 20, who have worked on new horror movies Obsession and Backrooms respectively.
He said: “Since COVID, there’s been this lethargic feeling around theatrical, and is it relevant anymore and is it going to survive?.
“And what I think is so incredible about Obsession and Backrooms is that they’re a new kind of movie. They’re made by non-traditional directors, directors who really honed their skills as creators online.
Their hope and desire and dream is to make cool movies. Backrooms and Obsession are edgy and weird and f******nuts.
"And to me, there’s almost this feeling of the ’70s, of a new generation of young people making edgy movies that are connecting in theaters in a crazy way.
"So many young people grew up in a time when they couldn’t go to the movies, and they haven’t had something made for them that gets them off their iPad and into theatres. Suddenly they have two movies.”
Blumhouse-Atomic Monster also includes TV, gaming and live events, and Wan and Blum have big plans for the company, which they want to "adapt with the audience".
Blum said: “What’s the aspiration? The Disney of horror’ is the aspiration in five years.”
