THE CONJURING directed by James Wan, written by Chad Hayes and Carey Hayes, with Patrick Wilson, Vera Farmiga, Ron Livingston and Lili Taylor. A Warner Bros. release. 112 minutes. Opens Friday (July 19). For venues and times, see listings.
Patrick Wilson is building up his genre muscles.
The frequently underestimated co-star of Hard Candy, Little Children and Young Adult played the tragic Nite Owl in Zack Snyder’s Watchmen, popped up as Noomi Rapace’s father in Prometheus and played a haunted surgeon in last year’s short-lived medical drama A Gifted Man.
But the actor says he’s most enjoying his time with director James Wan, with whom he’s made three pictures in rapid succession. The first was Insidious, which sent him into a surrealistic fantasy landscape to rescue his possessed son. (They reunited for a sequel, Insidious: Chapter Two, which opens this fall.) And now there’s The Conjuring, another tale of angry spirits, but one inspired by actual events.
“I think we work pretty well together,” Wilson says over the phone from San Francisco. “He’s a big believer in character and story, so while he comes up with these great beats and moments and scares, he loves the character stuff. He loves when we come in and say, ‘I wanna try this dialect,’ or ‘Hey, look at this picture of them. I wanna wear these clothes.’ He’s all for that. He’s all for getting us as real and as human as we can do it. Now that we’re three movies in, we have a great shorthand.”
In The Conjuring, Wilson plays paranormal investigator and author Ed Warren, who with his wife, Lorraine (Vera Farmiga), became famous in the 1970s for cleansing supposedly haunted houses. One of them was a little place in Amityville, Long Island. In The Conjuring, set a few years earlier, the Warrens are called to help a family in Rhode Island who are experiencing unsettling phenomena.
So how do you play a demon-hunter?
“First and foremost you’re there to listen,” he says. “That’s what any good helper does. I think Ed was unclear about his own ability, so he was constantly being challenged. He’s a very steadfast and loyal guy, and strong-willed, but he understands his limitations. He’s not clairvoyant, nor did he try to be, so really he was looking out for his wife for a lot of it, you know? I think that’s what we tried to latch onto.”
Wilson isn’t sure where he stands on the whole supernatural thing, but he says that isn’t a problem.
“Honestly, I don’t get my own feelings involved,” he says. “Look, my first job as an actor is not to judge who I’m playing or what I’m doing it’s your job as an actor to just be open. Because I haven’t seen a ghost or a demon doesn’t mean someone else hasn’t. I’m playing a guy who believes in it – so that’s what I believe in, you know?”
Interview Clips
Patrick Wilson on how he and Vera Farmiga wound up playing the Warrens:
Wilson on his research into Ed Warren’s professional life:
Wilson on the importance of casting proper actors in horror movies:
normw@nowtoronto.com | @wilnervision
