James Wan is a modern day master of horror. A director, producer, and screenwriter, Wan has made a name for himself amongst genre fans with such standouts as Saw, Insidious, and The Conjuring, but he also serves to be a rare example of a filmmaker who consistently improves with every project he puts out. This is probably why when it came time for Universal to fill the highly coveted position of director of the mega summer blockbuster Furious 7, they snatched up Wan in a hurry.

Wan had already dedicated over a decade of his career to making horror movies, and now the time had come for him to venture out and take on the challenge of conquering another category of cinema. Wan took a brief hiatus from the genre he held dear to his heart just long enough to come face to face with one of his most daunting challenges yet: deliver an impressive and profitable new entry of a beloved franchise created by someone other than himself. It would be a difficult feat for anyone to accomplish, but the obstacle he faced grew even more daunting when the news came out that the heart and soul of The Fast and The Furious franchise, Paul Walker, had unexpectedly passed away. Tragedy and terrible odds permeated the series, and for a while it seemed that the crew would never ride again. However, with time, discipline, and a lot of love, Wan steered the film in the right direction, and landed an opening weekend worldwide gross that exceeded the whole profit that the first film made in its entire run. Wan’s Furious 7 not only became the only entry in the franchise thus far to reach one billion dollars at the box office, but it also was so well received that it became a favorite installment for many of its hard-to-impress loyal fans.

Now, after proving that he is capable of tackling any genre he pleases, Wan is back where he belongs, hanging with the horror kids, as he releases his newest fright flick, The Conjuring 2. Since he’s been off exploring new territory, both by making an action movie, and by working on a top tier, huge Hollywood budget production, one can only assume that his creation of The Conjuring 2 was approached with an entirely different perspective than that of The Conjuring, back in 2013. According to Wan, he wasn’t expecting making the sequel to feel any different than the first time around, but to his surprise, it was a fresh new experience.

“You know, I thought it would be a lot easier. I thought like, ‘Oh you know, I’m gonna come back to Conjuring 2, it’ll be a walk in the park’, but it wasn’t” remembers Wan. “It was very difficult, partially because I really felt the pressure of the first movie, and the first one is so beloved, and so making number two, I just felt that the bar was set so high with the first one, it was really hard trying to live up to that. But, the upside to that was I just ended up putting a lot of pressure on myself to try and push myself, go as far as I could, you know don’t settle for anything less in the storytelling of the script, in the designing of the set pieces, in the filmmaking, the camerawork, the music, everything, so every step of the way, I kept pushing myself and pushing myself to try to make the best film I could”.

Although Wan didn’t necessarily set out to learn something on the set of Furious 7 that he would take back with him when he made The Conjuring 2 the following year, he found an old lesson which he had only touched on in the past being highlighted and emphasized in a new and important way.

“I think, ultimately what I learned from F7, and something that I’ve learned from my previous movies as well, but F7 just really hammered it home for me, is it kind of doesn’t matter how crazy and over-the-top your film is, if people love your characters that you create and you make, they will come with you” Wan explains as his excited grin begins to grow. “They will follow you, and you can just go driving cars out of the back of a plane, jumping from building to building, and people will go along with it if they like your characters, and that is something that I really took to heart after making Furious 7. Then, when going into this one, I really put so much more emphasis on the characters of the Warrens, and also on the characters of the Hodgsons family as well”.

It’s fascinating how working on an action movie could teach someone so much about how to handle his future horror projects, but that’s what happens when a brave filmmaker like Wan takes a chance and steps out of his or her comfort zone to try something new and gain a new perspective on their passion.

The notion that the characters are the most essential part of the scares is an idea that obviously stemmed with Wan long ago, but really hit home after his time on Furious 7. If you think about it, The Conjuring series is one of the only horror franchises to follow the heroes instead of the villains, and The Conjuring 2 is the most terrifying one yet because the characters are so well developed that the audience cares about whether or not they are attacked by the evil spirit in their house. Not only is the family fleshed out and relatable, but our heroes, Ed and Lorraine Warren, remain two of the most likable horror movie characters in recent memory. Going against the popular opinion that it’s the scares that make the first film so compelling, Wan argues that it’s actually the characters that keep fans coming back for more.

“Besides the fact that [the Warrens] are real people, I think they’re really intriguing and fascinating people” says Wan. “The fact that they’re real people and they real do do these things, you know whether or not you believe in what they do, that’s another side of the story there, but I do think the way myself and Vera and Patrick portray the Warrens in the cinematic Warren-Conjuring universe, I think they’re very likable characters. I think that’s why people actually like The Conjuring films. They may come for the scares, but they stay for the characters”.

The Conjuring 2 hits theaters everywhere on June 10th, 2016.

THE CONJURING 2 | image via Warner Bros.

THE CONJURING 2 | image via Warner Bros.