James Wan Reveals Thoughts on Seeing Insidious: The Red Door’s Patrick Wilson Direct a Horror Movie (Exclusive)

In recent years, Patrick Wilson has found himself a mainstay of horror properties, effectively becoming the face of both The Conjuring and Insidious franchises. The actor is even making his directorial debut in the latest entry of the latter as Insidious: The Red Door enters theaters this coming weekend. Because of his involvement in the aforementioned franchises, Wilson has become a recurring collaborator of James Wan, who tells us he feels like a proud dad seeing the actor assume the role of director.

“It was very exciting for me and kind of felt like a proud dad in some way. My son is finally off to college and this is the result,” Wan tells ComicBook.com’s Chris Killian. “I’m definitely very proud of what Patrick created and what he had made with this film. Patrick and I go way back and I’ve known the guy for a while. For him to finally step up to the plate as director it was very exciting for me and when I heard we were going to come back to do another Insidious movie, I was like ‘Okay, that’s cool,’ but when Patrick was attached to it, it was a whole different level.”

In a separate interview late last year, Wan spoke of his creative process with Wilson, hinting it’s different from most other actors he works with.

“One of the things I love best about working with Patrick Wilson is that we don’t actually talk about the movie that we are making on set. We geek out about all the movies that we loved growing up, because Patrick and I are roughly of the same generation,” the director-turned-producer said in a chat with THR.

He added, “We’re just constantly geeking out about John Carpenter’s Big Trouble in Little China and all these movies. Patrick reminds me a little bit of Leigh Whannell in that they are not just actors slash whatever; they are filmmakers as well. They’re film buffs, and being film buffs, they look at acting from the point of view of what the final film will be like. And so that actually helps inform them as filmmakers. So I’m always very excited when people like Leigh Whannell and Patrick Wilson want to jump behind the camera.”

Insidious: The Red Door opens only in theaters July 7th from Sony Pictures Releasing.