Into It with Sam Sanders
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M3ganproducer James Wan knows hes doing something right when his ideas freak him out.
My goal is to scare myself, he says.
Its already queer canon.
And it proves one ofInto Ithost Sam Sanderss pet theories: Horror consistently wins at the box office.
When I was at my Catholic college …Which one?
University of the Incarnate Word.
I want to say I was a junior.
A student activity group organized an outing for the thirdSawmovie.
I was there with 20 friends, and it starts and its justscary.
I start muttering to myself, and then Im praying, and then I just secretly walked out.
Ive never in my life left a movie.
Later on I watched it on DVD and loved it.
Do you have a formula?
Theres no such thing as a formula to make things scary.
My goal is to scare myself.
I cannot stop thinking about this movie, cannot stop talking about it.
Ive got three or four group chats that are justM3GANGIFs and memes.
I love this movie so much.
It is a big, big hit.
So I knew there was a very particular niche that would dig it.
But for it to blow up as big as it did, that definitely caught me pleasantly by surprise.
So why do you think it did?
Was it just the doll factor?
Was it the really amazing videos Ive been seeing of this doll for months now?
Was it Allison Williams?
What was the secret sauce in your opinion?A combination of all the things you mentioned.
First and foremost, the movie works really well.
The marketing of a film works best when theres something they can latch onto.
And obviously the dancing
The dancing doll.The dancing doll.
And not even just dancing.
Body rolling, winding.
Really, really dancing well.Yeah.
That was something that obviously really caught on with social media.
Then the trick was to deliver with the film, which we did.
Im interested in the secret sauce of getting the look of M3GAN just right.
I expected it to look very CGI-ish, but she didnt.
She felt human, but also always still felt like you were watching a robotic doll.Right.
Thats what makes M3GAN creepy: Shes neither here nor there.
But she still has a lot of personality.
But its even better when people latch onto it and make the film their own.
Shes a gay icon.
Youve heard this before, though.She has become that.
People have said thatSawis queer too.
Youve heard this before, you must have.Saw,Annabelle, and evenMalignant, to some degree.
In that respect, it connects.
I want to go big-picture on horror, but one last question for you aboutM3GANbefore we move on.
Well, and now M3GAN, but that Chucky doll speaks to my childhood.
My mother, its funny, she let my brother and I watchChilds Playway too young.
I saw the first one when I was like 8 or 9.
Hes a classic killer doll.
He actually gets up and walks around and kills people.
So I find those scary, but Chucky definitely is the grandfather of killer dolls.
She could be kind of omnipotent in that respect, whereas Chucky is just the one guy.
So I would say M3GAN has a wider reach.
But Chucky is almost unkillable.
I guess you were going to pick M3GAN, and thats fine.I kind of have to.
WasPoltergeistthe film that set you on your path to horror?
The other film that scarred me wasJaws, another really terrifying movie.
Even in this totally strange and unpredictable movie environment, horror is reliably bankable at the box office.
It plays really well in a group setting.
I think a lot of that is primal.
Thats entrenched in us, in our soul, in a deep, deep way.
Its funny hearing you talk about why horror works.
I love being scared around strangers, for whatever reason.
I dont want to cry around strangers.
I want to cry to a sad movie at home alone.
But if I gotta be scared, Im going to be scared with strangers.
Ive actually done that.
Do you ever tell yourself to not open that door?I have opened the door.
These are all classic horror-movie tropes that you should not do.
I should know better.
Can I tell you my theory about why horror always succeeds?just.
Id love to hear.
I think horror works because it allows us to think about grief.
In the western world, and especially America, we dont handle grief well.
We avoid it or we wrap it in euphemism until its actually something shallow.
Good horror deals with what happens after we die.
It asks the question, what is the line between life and death?
It asks how our past and the dead linger on after theyre gone.
Horror deals with all of that.
Am I wrong to think that?I think thats potentially a big part of it.
And youre right in the sense that horror movies deal with death in a big way.
It touches on the idea that there may be life after death.
Thats why people love scary supernatural movies with ghosts and the afterlife and demons and stuff.
Thats something horror movies let your mind expand into that you dont really deal with in your everyday life.
The other thing I would say with horror is that its actually very topical.
Jordan Peele, withGet Out, dealt with a very topical theme.
You look atNight of the Living Dead.
He put that into his films.
And ironically, horror films have played best when the world is in some kind of turmoil.
When the world goes through a dark period, horror seems to flourish even more.
You have become a kingmaker in horror as an Asian creative.
I love hearing ghost stories and superstitious stories from my grandparents, from my aunties and uncles in Malaysia.
And I always give a shot to fit them somehow into my movies.
And I think we all have ghost stories from different parts of the world.
In Japanese society, the bed is generally on the floor and so theres nothing underneath it.
So culturally, it works a bit differently, but were all still human.
And it also came back a little bit in theConjuringfilms, actually inAnnabelle 3.
So that was one aspect.
Nowadays, I know, everyone will go, Horror is the savior of cinema.
Horror deals with otherness.
And also on top of that, shes supercool.
I can see why shes held up in a big way.
How connected are you to continuing to make movies for big theaters?
Would you ever sign a bazillion-dollar deal for streaming?
Im just a big fan of the genre.
Thats the bottom line.
It really just depends on whatever serves best to tell your story.Im a big believer of cinema.
Last question for you.
Tell me everything you’re free to tell me about theM3GANsequel.
Theres got to be one.
Whats the new doll like?
She could do or be anything.
Theres like six available skin tones.
I want you to tell me that the new M3GAN has box braids and an accent.
We have ideas of a smart car, smart house …
Not the smart-car horror film.
An evil Tesla trying to kill you.
Whatever you do, my only request is an eight-minute choreo sequence.
I need eight or nine dolls dancing for ten minutes.
Promise me that, like.Like a classic Bob Fosse opening sequence, right?
We need some Fosse doll up in here.
You heard it here first.Thats right.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
