Saw creator's brutal new horror film features scene he was forced to cut from Insidious for being too gory

Leigh Whannell, the co-creator of the Insidious series, has revealed that his latest film features a scene so gruesome that it was cut from the haunted horror entirely.

But whilst it was decided to be too gory for Insidious, it made its way into his newest entry.

Whannell has a stacked horror resume, having wrote all five Insidious films and directed the third in the series, as well as being a co-creator of the iconic Saw franchise.

In addition to this, he starred in the first Saw, directed The Invisible Man, and even the highly underrated Upgrade.

And now, his latest outing sees him take on an iconic movie monster with his new film, Wolf Man.

A remake of the 1941 classic, Whannell’s take stars Christopher Abbott and Julia Garner.

Though for majority of the film’s creation, Ryan Gosling was set to take on the role, however, Abbott stepped in when scheduling conflicts caused the Barbie and Blade Runner star to drop out.

We spoke exclusively to Whannell, where he actually revealed that the sequence in question was part of the werewolf transformation scene from the film.

He said: “I remember there was a sequence in the first Insidious film that I wrote that was quite gory, and it would have pushed that film into an R rating, and that film just didn't quite feel like that.

“It's funny. I did get it into Wolf Man. I haven't told anyone this, but in the first Insidious film, I had written a scene where the little boy breaks his own jaw and reaches up and grabs it.”

The director then pointed to a scene in the film in which the werewolf fully finishes their transformation, with the man reaching down and breaking his own jaw to complete it.

This footage was released by Universal ahead of the film’s release, which can be seen below.

Gore and spoiler warning for the Wolf Man below:

The Wolfman in ‘WOLF MAN’ has been officially revealed.

In theaters on January 17. pic.twitter.com/beD69pQJ7s

— DiscussingFilm (@DiscussingFilm) January 7, 2025

He went on to say: “That was all practical. So I finally got my jaw break in there. I must have some weird subconscious obsession with jaws, because I think about Saw now.

“That whole thing of the device, there must be something.”

When asked about how different the film is to the one Gosling was set to star in, Whannell said: “Not really very different. It's quite similar. The very first draft was essentially the core idea.

“Is what you see now in the finished movie. We went through many drafts, but that simple idea of the family in isolation and the infection that was all there from the very first idea.”

He went on to say: “Ryan was involved for a long time. But because of the COVID and the strikes and all these obstacles, his schedule gets really booked up, and suddenly he can't do the movie as an actor, but I'm so happy with what Christopher Abbott did.

“Ryan is too. So I feel like, you know, Ryan's a great actor, and so is Chris. I feel like they're actually contemporaries in terms of their talent, because they really put the art first.

“They are egoless, they don't care about what how they're being perceived, or what they look like.

“It's really about their artistic challenges to themselves.”

Wolf Man is in cinemas from Friday, 17 January.