Aquaman was, for the most part, a pretty lighthearted superhero movie. The character of Arthur Curry is pretty laid back and he never lets much get to him. However, at one point, the movie's tone takes a serious shift when Aquaman and Mera end up going up against the creatures of the Trench.
From this point, for a few minutes, the film becomes something much more like a horror movie. Of course, when your director is James Wan, the brain behind the Conjuring franchise, you're in pretty good shape. Wan says he particularly loved the creatures of the trench because it let him go back to those horror roots. According to Wan...
I definitely love the trench creatures because it does allow me to hunt back to my horror roots and so I went all out and basically made those sequences just monster movies, like just sea creature monster movies.
James Wan maybe wasn't the most out of left field choice to direct Aquaman. He had done the seventh installment of the Fast and Furious franchise, and so doing a fairly traditional action movie wasn't an entirely new idea. However, Wan has always been more closely associated with the horror genre.
Back in 2004 he directed the first installment of the Saw franchise, where he has remained a producer ever since. After that, he developed The Conjuring, a franchise, which has spawned sequels and spin-offs of its own. Clearly, James Wan loves making horror movies, so it makes sense he would love the sequence in Aquaman that feels very much like something out of a horror movie.
The scene follows Arthur Curry and Mera as the take a boat out to open water, to the place where they believe the Trident of Atlan is being kept. However, that particular stretch of ocean belongs to one of the lost Kingdoms of Atlantis, one that has gone feral since the kingdoms fell apart.
The atmosphere is perfect for a horror movie. There's a storm going on. It's nearly pitch black, making it hard to see where the creatures are. First our heroes try to find shelter in the cabin of the boat, when that fails, they find themselves surrounded by monsters.
It's certainly an effective scene and while it's drastically different from anything else in Aquaman, it certainly works. Get a quick look at it, as well as hear James Wan's comments, in the exclusive clip from the Blu-ray extras of Aquaman, below.
Of course, James Wan clearly isn't the only person who loved the creatures of The Trench. The word is that a spin-off film is being developed that will focus on them, so there were apparently a lot of people at DC and Warner Bros. who loved that part of the movie.
Exactly what this new movie will actually be about is far from clear. Maybe it will be an origin story that explains how these Atlanteans became monsters, but it could just as easily be an actual horror movie, where the Trench creatures become the monsters that other characters are trying to escape from. Certainly, the stage has been set by one great horror director. maybe another could come in and make a superhero horror movie.
Aquaman is available in Digital HD and arrives on Blu-ray today.
