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When the name James Wen is mentioned, the first thing North American fans think of is horror movies and Chain Saw, and there is even an nickname Father of Chainsaw that is widely circulated on the Internet.

To put it bluntly, Wen Ziren already has a relatively large influence among North American horror movie fans.

Latent has attracted the attention of horror film lovers since the trailer was released.

On the last weekend of August, Latent, which cost only $1.5 million to produce, was released in North America.

Looking at the production cost alone, this horror film can be regarded as a small production among small productions, but with more than 3,500 opening theaters and only 4,000 copies invested, the Embassy Pictures spent 4 million US dollars.

This is still some theaters that have replaced digital projection equipment, denying that the investment in copying will be higher.

In addition, the publicity investment of 8 million US dollars can only be said to be average for a film released on this scale.

Before Latent is officially released in North America, there is a small premiere.

Since the Warrens were advertised as real-life supernatural investigation experts early on during the publicity, the small premiere of Latent was directly held in Connecticut, where the New England Supernatural Association and the Warren Supernatural Museum are located. Bridgeport, State.

In the publicity of the embassy film industry, Ed Warren and Rowling Warren were portrayed as the most outstanding experts in the field of soul and demonology in North America in the past fifty years.

This is a country where theism is deeply rooted in the hearts of the people. The experience of the Warrens inevitably attracted the attention of a large number of supernatural lovers.

The propaganda of the Embassy Films inevitably has some exaggerations, but even the church admits that the Warrens have been repeatedly called by the church to investigate some evil spirits in North America.

These have become topics that people talk about in addition to the formal promotion of the film.

On the day of the premiere, thousands of movie fans gathered near the Bridgeport Grand Theater, most of whom were supernatural lovers and James Wan fans.

That's right, as a director, Wen Ziren also has a relatively staunch supporter group.

Frankly speaking, the film Latent doesn't seem very special at first glance. The family happily lives in a new house and is suddenly attacked by a ghost. The plot of such a haunted house seems to have nothing new to pay attention to.

However, when its director is James Wen, many horror movie lovers are full of expectations.

Driven by Embassy Pictures and Relativity Entertainment, Wen Ziren has not kept a low profile in the past few years. The fact that the title of Father of the Chainsaw can spread is enough to explain many problems.

The Chain Saw series has indeed won many fans for Wen Ziren.

Every year before winter, when Halloween comes, countless horror movie fans look forward to the release of the new series of Chain Saw and even become a cultural phenomenon. A considerable number of movie fans and media in North America are talking about the name James Wen with relish. .

Wen Ziren has created his own way of horror movies. When people thought that closed-door horror movies were just that, he brought the Chain Saw series to the movie market, and he didn't continue to be attached to this series. It is to continue the exploration of the road of horror movies.

In this Latent, Wen Ziren has an idea about the ghosts in the supernatural space again, and the environment like the old house has the taste of a closed space in Chain Saw.

Usually, a director who has become famous will also be burdened by this, but this problem does not exist for Wen Ziren. He became famous because of Chain Saw, and at the same time he is still trying new creative ideas for horror movies.

Driven by the embassy film industry, Latent participated in the screening of the Cannes Film Festival in the first half of the year.

Like Slumdog Millionaire, which got nothing at the film festival, it was widely praised by the media, and the film's ingenious use of sound effects and photography was highly recognized on the technical level.

Therefore, James Wen also waited with peace of mind until the autumn horror film schedule, presenting a classic haunted house horror movie to the audience.

The most outstanding passage of the film is undoubtedly the beginning and end of the spirituality ceremony. The Warrens and the spirituality equipment that has no religious or scientific roots will make the audience question their somewhat unrealistic spirituality just like the hero. But all kinds of supernatural phenomena that don't need scientific explanation are enough to surprise people who are used to watching horror movies.

If you like the horror effect of inadvertently appearing ghosts and harsh sound effects, you will ignore the rationality of the methods used by psychics to summon souls, and just fall into the spiritual world covered by dense nets.

James Wen was born in Asia and is well versed in the essence of Asian horror culture. He covered the structure of European and American horror films on the appearance of the film, but the film itself did not discuss too much the usual personality, psychology, and religion of European and American horror styles. Instead, it magnifies the world of ghosts and ghosts, and reproduces the frightening world of hell with a dazzling image, especially Rowling Allen's departure from the real world to the underworld to find the soul of a lost child. In the first paragraph, hell is shrouded in a white mist, and the ghosts encountered are also cold and numb, and the full Gothic style jumps on the screen.

As the true beginning of the horror movie universe, Insidious also has a mission to lead to subsequent series.

So, at the end of the film, the Warrens receive an invitation to speak at a university.

Behind the main subtitles, there is an easter egg, a pseudo-documentary shot that looks like a clip from an old video tape, a clip of the Warrens speaking in a university auditorium.

In their presentation, the Warrens focused on one case they allegedly had a real-life experience—the haunting of the Perron family in Rhode Island!

This is paving the way for next year's The Conjuring!

Before filming Latent, Wen Ziren once said to Ronan that a horror story must scare oneself first!

Thus, Insidious was born, and successfully achieved success after its release, continuing the tradition of successful horror films for Relativity Entertainment.

In the first weekend of its release in North America, this horror film sold 31.22 million US dollars in 3560 theaters.

On the same weekend, Duel in Yuma Town, produced and distributed by Lionsgate and starring Christian Bale and Russell Crowe, was released.

However, this remake of the classic old film did not glow with a new brilliance because of the joining of two first-line stars. Instead, it sank amidst criticism, and only $13.03 million was earned in the opening weekend.

Insidious easily overwhelmed Duel in Yuma Town and topped the North American box office list.

In just three days, relying on the North American market alone, Relativity Entertainment recovered all its investment in Latent.

The income brought by this film to Relativity Entertainment can basically be included in the ranks of profits.

As we all know, small-budget horror films often win the market, but lose media opinion.

But Latent won James Wen a good voice in the media.

Like the New York Times, it thinks that the film is crazy, scary, and creepy.

There are also many positive comments from other media such as the description of the evil spirit is enough to scare the audience and there is no excessive bloody show, and the atmosphere conquers the audience.

Entertainment Weekly even praised: Latent is a typical ghost film, but there are amazing scenes in it that we haven't seen in the past ten years.

It has to be said that James Wen has an extremely outstanding talent in horror genre films.

Speaking of horror movies, I believe that everyone has a special experience related to it. As an important part of the movie genre, horror movies have functions that cannot be replaced by other types of movies. Through psychological and visual stimulation, they help the audience entertain Various inner emotions.

People who often watch horror movies almost agree that horror movies have obvious regional characteristics. For example, Asian horror movies represented by Korea, Japan and Thailand are often good at creating a scary atmosphere, and often a sound effect can scare people. It belongs to the heart-walking school.

European and American horror movies represented by the United States often emphasize visual horror and stimulation, and the bloody and terrifying scenes often scare people into the urine, which belongs to the kidney-walking school.

As for oriental horror movies, those that can be shown in theaters must be returned with various scientifically explainable reasons such as psychopathic fantasy, which belongs to the typical approaching science school.

Approaching Science, which probably bears the childhood horror memories of many friends, is scarier than the oriental horror movies shown in theaters.

When the style of horror films has basically become a template, Wen Ziren avoided the traditional horror plots, but used the actors to express the audience's actions and expressions that would appear in the horror scenes in the story.

In Latent, Wen Ziren abandoned the traditional blood plasma stimulation method, but also added a lot of new horror primary colors in it, and built a new game rule in the supernatural world - summoning the dead with the soul.

This approach is rare in horror films, and more importantly, James Wen has achieved great success.

The success of Latent has made a good start for the Horror Movie Universe project.

Relativity Entertainment also took advantage of the success of Latent to promote a wave of The Conjuring, which made many movie fans remember the name The Conjuring.

A real horror film never plays with inexplicable miraculous effects from beginning to end, and strange things jump out all the time to scare people.

Whether watching a horror movie is good or not, the creation of a horror atmosphere is an important criterion.

Wan Ziren will definitely leave a strong mark in the entire history of Hollywood horror movies.

Since the schedule was selected at the end of August, there were no particularly powerful films released after Latent, and it has maintained a relatively stable North American box office trend. The box office decline in the second weekend in North America was less than 40%. Over the weekend, it won the second North American box office championship with US$1,875.

In just ten days of its release in North America, the box office of Latent has accumulated as high as 55.12 million US dollars, which is more than 30 times the production cost of 1.5 million US dollars.

There is no doubt that this horror film will inevitably be listed among the most successful movies in history.