After James Wan had directed a handful of horror movies about ghosts and possession, he comes to the genre for something completely different. Without giving away anything about the twist, it is definitely something that has so many people split. The movie actually takes a lot of inspiration from older Italian horror films, or “giallo”, where the use several tropes from those movies, like the use of neon lights, a mysterious black-glove killer, and over the top violence.
This also seems like a movie that’s self aware and doesn’t take itself too seriously. This does make the movie more fun than scary, which can lose a lot of people who were expecting a movie similar to James Wan’s other movies like the Conjuring or Insidious. It can also be blamed on a lot of the advertisement where they tried to make it look more like those movies. It’s overall a really entertaining movie that I can see becoming a cult classic in the future. I just find it surprising that a big budget studio like Warner Bros would allow to make a movie this strange and unconventional. Maybe because James Wan already made them a billion dollars with his Aquaman movie that they just allowed him to do whatever he wants and I’m glad he got to make it.