Movies
James Wan Wants to “Make a Scary ‘Saw'” That Recaptures the Spirit of the First Film
With Blumhouse’s acquisition of Saw, creators James Wan and Leigh Whannell are returning to the franchise that launched their careers.
While at Sundance for the Park City Legacy screening of the 2004 horror classic, Wan spoke to Letterboxd’s Isaac Feldberg about his involvement in the upcoming eleventh installment in the storied series.
“For me to finally come back to it, I feel I have probably the freshest outlook. I feel I can come back to it with a new perspective whilst knowing that with this next movie I want to hark back to the spirit of the first movie,” says Wan.
“One of the things I really want to do with this next Saw is make it scary again. I want to make a scary Saw — not just gory, but psychologically scarring, like what Leigh and I did in the first movie.
“Leigh and I both want to recapture the spirit of that first film and revisit Jigsaw’s philosophy, which is that he goes after people who don’t appreciate their lives.”
He continues, “If you’re a scumbag, but you appreciate your life, he doesn’t see you as someone who’s wasting your life, so I want to go back to what we touched on in the first movie with regard to that.
“At the same time, I want to honor what people have come to love about the franchise, whilst trying to do something fresh and new that we haven’t seen before.”
Wan concludes, “This next movie would be the eleventh installment, and there’ve been lots of films in this world. We need to do something different in order to reach out to a new generation that didn’t grow up with it.”
Saw XI is still in early development, so stay tuned for more as we learn it.
Before updating the video nasty Faces of Death, director Daniel Goldhaber and writer Isa Mazzei explored the dangers of online life in tech-thriller Cam, their feature debut that was acquired by Netflix in 2018 after making waves on the festival circuit.
At the end of last year, the Netflix exclusive quietly departed from the streaming platform, left without another streaming home.
It’s not an isolated story; Mike Flanagan’s Hush also left streaming entirely for a period until it was finally picked up on both physical media and other streaming services.
While the tech-thriller currently isn’t available to watch on Netflix, Tubi, Hulu, or any other platforms, that’s not a problem for Cam thanks to a very cool move by Goldhaber: the director has made his breakout film accessible to watch online for free via his website.
As his site notes: “CAM is unfortunately not currently available to view on any platforms, so you can watch it here if you like :).“
No subscriptions or fees necessary, just hit play.
Cam follows Alice (Madeline Brewer), who works as an online cam girl obsessed with her ranking on the cam site. The higher her ranking goes, the more it draws unwanted attention, and Alice soon finds herself replaced on her own show with a doppelganger.
Written by Mazzei, a former camgirl, it uses the horror thriller premise to examine the life of a sex worker; Alice’s career ambition is directly at odds with the shame it brings to her family, and how she tries to spare them from it by keeping them in the dark. It only compounds her danger when the doppelganger enters the equation in Goldhaber’s engaging thriller.
For a deep dive into the treacherous world of Cam, listen to Horror Queers’ episode on it now.
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