James Wan‘s heralded return to horror, Malignant, releases on September 10, in theaters and HBO Max, but much of it remains shrouded in mystery. The filmmaker cited Dario Argento, Mario Bava, and Brian De Palma as inspiration, and the imagery released so far teases Wan’s take on the Giallo. Ahead of its release, Bloody Disgusting chatted with the modern horror master to dig into those influences and why he made Malignant for horror fans- including himself.

One thing Wan made clear straight away; don’t expect the Giallo classics as inspiration. Wan drew from the wilder, supernatural films. “I would say that when I reference Argento, I don’t necessarily reference his classics like Deep Red or Suspiria. I would reference more like Trauma, Phenomena, Tenebrae, some of these later ones just because they’ve got more and more out there, if you will, for lack of better description. And I felt like that’s the spirit of this.”

In other words, it’s purely Wan’s take on the Giallo. “I’m such a big Giallo fan. I mean, there’s no denying that. I’ve said that in the past. I’ve always harbored this desire to make a Giallo movie, but do it my way; my version of Giallo. So, it’s not fully the traditional classical Giallo. It had certain aesthetical things that I bring from it. It still has the umbrella idea of a woman dealing with the trauma of what happened to her. She’s trying to overcome it. She’s trying to stay one step ahead of a killer that is killing these people around her and coming after her. It has the shades of that. But then I take it in my own direction.”

Wan’s horror films often feel like they feature some level of inside baseball or engage in a conversation solely with the horror fan. “It’s funny that you say that because even the first image that I released of Malignant, which was just this hand-holding this weird bladed instrument, I knew the general public probably have no idea what the heck that is. But I knew that immediately there’d be a group of people that would go, “We know exactly what this movie is going to be about.” And it’s that part of all of this that makes it really cool for me. I’m one of these people in that small group of people, and I’m sharing it with my friends, if you will,” Wan explained of making Malignant as a horror fan for horror fans.

“It’s definitely something more intimate and more personal for me. The best way I describe Malignant is, growing up in the late ’80s and ’90s when I would go to the video store- when video stores were still around- we would go to the video store. I would go all the way to the back of the video store to the horror section because that’s where they usually keep the horror section. They were too embarrassed to have it upfront. And then, once I get to that section, I would venture even deeper into the horror section, into the back shelves, and take down a video cover that I’ve never seen before, but the cover was so cool. I don’t know what the movie is. That is how I describe Malignant. Malignant is that movie that I take from the back shelves.”

Malignant seems like Wan unrestrained in a playful way, and he reflects on why that is, “Yeah, I honestly think it’s partially because the last ten years I’ve become known as like The Conjuring guy. I’ve become known as the supernatural ghost guy because of the Insidious and The Conjuring films. I thought, oh wait, wait a minute. You guys were labeling me the torture porn guy from 15 years ago. How did I become like the ghostly jump scare guy? I guess it’s just me being playful, just kind of me knowing people’s perception of me. And when I start to think that I’m becoming repetitive, or that I feel like people think they know me too well now, that’s when I go, okay, I need to change things up. I need to reinvent myself. I need to try different things. And that was the case with Malignant.”

“I went out to do something original that wasn’t based on an IP, but still be inspired by all the stuff that I love, all those influences that I have in my life and hark back to the movies that I broke out with at the start of my career. I wanted to go back and make a movie for the fans, for the horror fans, the hardcore horror fans that have been around that have supported me and said, “Hey, I haven’t forgotten you guys because I’m one of you guys,” and I want to go back and do something like that again. And listen, I don’t know when I’ll ever get the chance to do something as crazy and outrageous as this again, so I’ll take this opportunity.”

Based on Wan’s ability to sneak horror into most of his projects, including that intense Mariana Trench sequence in Aquaman, we have a hunch he’ll never truly leave horror. Wan grins, “Well, I say you can take the boy out of horror, but you can’t take the horror out of the boy. It’s first and foremost my first love, and it will always be in me.”