Born on 27 February 1977 in Kuching, the capital of the Malaysian state of Sarawak, James Wan was a federal state of Malay, Chinese, Indian and other ethnic minorities.
Malaysia
Wen Ziren's family belongs to the Chinese ethnic group , and he lived in Malaysia for 7 years , a multi-ethnic, multicultural country near the equator that is controlled by tropical rainforests and tropical monsoon climates all year round, which forged Wen Ziren's original cultural genes.
At the age of 7, Wen Ziren immigrated to Australia with his family, from an island country to a large independent continental country, Wen Ziren was deeply attracted by Australia's unique natural landscapes, flora and fauna, and the gap between residence and culture made him add a lot of new thinking and mentality to the turmoil, change and adaptation. At the age of 11, Wen Ziren developed an extremely strong interest in movies. At the age of 14, Wen Ziren's father died, an event that greatly affected Wen Ziren, after which he began to have frequent nightmares, began to think about death, soul, which had never been touched before, and the shadows of childhood and reflection on shadows even became some of the inspiration and source of his future horror films.
Later, Wen ziren was admitted to the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT), one of Australia's oldest institutions of higher learning and the champion of five science and technology universities in the Australian University of Technology Alliance. In college, Wen Ziren's major is the division of The Chinese nationalities, which is not a popular major for good employment, if there is no accident, he may become a research scholar or university teacher after graduation, through professional study, Wen Ziren has a further understanding of the mysterious oriental culture, and more importantly, Wen Ziren met a friend who changed his life in college: Ray Werner.
Wen Ziren directed "Chainsaw Horror"
Ray Werner is the same age as Wen Ziren, only 1 month and 10 days older than Wen Ziren, and in college, Wen Ziren and Ray Werner join a film club because of their common hobby: Splicer Parker. Splicer Pike is an unofficial film society dedicated to the production of "modern brutal horror genre films", where a large group of young film enthusiasts who like horror and thriller themes are gathered, who often pull together to discuss horror movie viewing experiences such as "The Silence of the Lambs" and "Texas Chainsaw Killer", and study together how to make more frightening and terrifying movies, especially Wen Ziren and Ray Werner. The two have always dreamed of making a horror movie that is truly their own.
In 2000, Wen Ziren made his debut film "Dark Night", and the male protagonist was Ray Werner.
After graduation, Ray Werner worked as a TV presenter for a while, but the mixture was not very good, Wen Ziren was not much better, because the original profession was very unpopular, the two people became difficult brothers, once poor and fell to the street, Ray Werner even had a headache because of the devastation of mental pressure, and once suspected that he had brain cancer. In 2003, Ray Werner wrote a screenplay inspired by brain cancer, which Wen Ziren made into a short film of about 9 minutes, which was the predecessor of Chainsaw Horror 5.0. In this short film, Ray Werner writes about the "vertical saw" that became a mechanism killer because of a brain tumor, Wen Ziren polishes and supplements the story from his childhood nightmare, and after completing the short film, the two people take the works everywhere to participate in the exhibition and find investors. Although the work is very rough, Lionsgate has expressed its appreciation and affirmation for the talents of Wen Ziren and Ray Werner after watching the short film, but despite this, Lionsgate has adopted a conservative strategy for these two 26-year-old young people, saying that they can only come up with $1.2 million at most.
Ray Werner
The young Wen Ziren accepted Lionsgate's conditions, but added a request of his own: he refused to take the director's fixed salary, and instead chose to pay dividends according to the final box office ratio. This slightly arrogant clause fully proves Wen Ziren's absolute confidence in his own directing skills.
As a result, the film, called "Chainsaw Horror", directed by Wen Ziren and written and starring Ray Werner, took only 5 days to prepare for filming, 18 days to shoot, and all the actors did not rehearse the film, and it became the closing film of the 2004 Toronto Film Festival. At the beginning, "Chainsaw Horror" was designated as NC-17 by the Film Association of America, after the film festival, Lionsgate Pictures quickly adjusted its strategy, let Wen Ziren delete and edit, re-declare with R rating, and at the same time, the film company made full efforts to expand publicity and strengthen distribution, after the release, this low-cost horror film with exquisite conception, tightly sewn story and visual bloody scenes, in one fell swoop broke the bottleneck of more and more routine and commercialization in the horror film market in the previous years, setting off a huge thriller storm among the audience. Bringing back the golden age of Hollywood's B-grade horror films of the 1970s back to audiences, the $1.2 million film grossed more than $100 million in the global market, with a staggering return on investment of 1:100.
jigsaw
In the next six years, the "Chainsaw Horror" series was released at a steady output of the Halloween slot at a rate of one per year, and Wen Ziren no longer served as a director, but became a producer or producer, and under his control, each "Chainsaw Horror" could achieve good box office results.
The "Chainsaw Horror" series has now been filmed eight films, which is Wen Ziren's most representative film work.
Wen Ziren is not tall, thin in stature, his appearance is not proud, always a messy hair, a "middle two" appearance. But Wen Ziren can choreograph and direct, the film he makes is logically rigorous, the imagination is rich, and its strange and strange places are particularly chilling, at the same time, he adds the torture of human nature, the whipping of society, and the exploration of philosophy in the work, which can be said to have pushed the horror film back to a new realm with his own strength, whether it is visual effects, story bridges, emotional rendering, etc. have brought a refreshing new experience to the audience.
Wen Ziren
In addition to the "Chainsaw Horror" series, Wen Ziren also created the "Conjuring" series and the "Latent" series, and built a horror movie universe centered on Wen Ziren. In recent years, he has successively directed Hollywood movies such as "Fast and Furious 7", "Aquaman 1", "Aquaman 2" and other Hollywood films, showing his ability to control super-large A-class Hollywood blockbusters in addition to small-budget horror films, and at present, Wen Ziren has become one of the film directors with world influence.