Who likes the "Insidious" movies? Okay, how about "The Conjuring" movies? The first "Saw"? Okay, how about "Fast and Furious 7"?

If you answered yes to all those, you have a problem (well accept for saying you enjoyed "Furious 7"). Come on people, those are some seriously disturbing movies. They're arguably the scariest material to come out thus far in to our generation. They all range from mind-numbingly terrifying to mind-numbingly horrifying and disgusting. Weirdos. I'm just joking. Don't feel bad. I really like those movies too.

Let's try that again. The titles mentioned are the titles of some of this generation's most well put together horror anthologies (again, with the exception of "Furious 7"). The stories not only manage to scare us out of our seats, but also manage to keep us there; to see what will come of the characters we've grown to care about over the last two hours.

All of these movies have a common theme. This common theme is named James Wan. Welcome to another edition of titles with puns by Mario Ricciardi. James Wan is one of the most creative and resilient directors of our time. As you can see in a nutshell by the success of the three famed horror series he has helmed, the fact that "Furious 7" grossed $1.5 billion in theaters (a level of success no other movie in the franchise has managed to pull off), and the trust Warner Brothers has given him to adapt an upcoming blockbuster movie out of the under-appreciated superhero Aquaman (a personal favorite of my own).

The Australian director of Malaysian descent may be the man responsible for many times why some of us have kept our lights on at night, but James Wan (pronounced like Obi-WAN-Kenobi) has openly gone on record saying he is ironically squeamish himself. He prefers not to watch things with much gore, but where that ends in his own work the film-making begins. If you were to re-watch any of his films you would find camera techniques that really push how even the more mundane moments are presented. He is very much on track to become this generation's Wes Craven.

He turns a simple establishing shot into a rotating crane shot turned into a stationary birds-eye view of a character opening a door (very artsy), or a medium shot of a window is turned into a tracking shot through a closed house. Of course there are the less routine moments where a close up of a character uncovering the plot's mystery turns into the scariest moment of the film where a Darth Maul-esque demon startles us from the shadows, or when Vin Diesel is jumping a car between skyscrapers 900 feet in the air. I think enough can be said about Wan's credibility based off of the fact that his success in one genre can be transferred over and into a completely different genre.

I was able to see "The Conjuring 2" last weekend. It proved to be the scariest movie I have ever seen in theaters, and the story alone was every bit as enthralling. It really was a treat for someone who seldom goes out of his way to be scared, but hey, every once in awhile a horror movie pays off. This has always been the case for James Wan in my opinion. His eye for unrelenting creativity in the least expected of places and his versatility make him a powerful story teller in the world of film-making. Not too many moviegoers realize who he is or what he's responsible for putting on the iridescent screen, but I am confident that will one day change. No (Wan)der we liked all of those films mentioned in the beginning so much.