Mike P. Nelson is directing the next Saw movie. We have talked to Mike twice this year, once in our March interview and again for Beware Boiúna, and one thing kept coming up both times. He takes franchises and subgenres you think you already know, then finds a way in that nobody else tried.
As Meaghan put it, “we’ve seen him reinvigorate two franchises basically in a row.” So before he steps into Jigsaw’s world, here is how he did it with every movie so far.
Who Is Mike P. Nelson? A Monster Kid Who Never Stopped
Mike’s horror education started early. He watched James Whale’s Frankenstein over and over on VHS at five, right alongside Raiders of the Lost Ark. Then his godfather taped The Monster Squad off HBO, and everything changed; monsters could be mean, there could be blood, and kids could be in the middle of it. He wrote a story about the Wolfman eating someone shortly after (his teacher was concerned, his dad was not).
He grew up making movies with his father’s shoulder-mounted camera rig and simply never stopped. That matters for everything below. When Mike takes on a franchise, it never feels like a studio job. It feels like a kid who loves this stuff getting his hands on the toys.
Wrong Turn (2021): Keeping the Woods, Changing the Fight
The original Wrong Turn was about travelers stranded in the woods and hunted by cannibal mountain men. Simple, brutal, and repeated across a lot of sequels. Mike did not go looking for it, either. After his first feature, The Domestics, the script landed in his lap.
Never did I think I was gonna be doing that.
What he changed was the fight itself. He kept the franchise DNA (the Appalachian setting, a group living in the woods, violence that keeps escalating), but the story became what he called “this trifecta“: liberal city kids colliding with conservative rural people colliding with a commune of violent idealists in the woods.
Why did it work for us: Because the reboot has something to say. Instead of just repeating the kills, it turns the woods into a collision between three very different groups. It still feels like Wrong Turn; it just isn’t a copy of it. This is also where Mike started working with writer Alan B. McElroy, the same writer behind Beware Boiúna.
Silent Night, Deadly Night (2025): A Santa Movie That Could Stand on Its Own
This is where Mike’s personal rule became clear. When producer Brad Miska brought him the remake, Mike built “a take specific enough that it could have worked as its own original Santa Claus movie if the studio had passed.” That is the bar. If the idea only works because of the brand name, it is not good enough.
The original built Billy Chapman around childhood trauma. Mike went somewhere else:
A couple scenes in, something completely different happens to Billy’s character that leads him into his entire sort of trajectory for the rest of the movie.
The voice guiding Billy, Charlie, came from a family movie night where Mike watched Ratatouille and Frailty back to back. One gave him “the whimsy of a character being guided by something else,” and the other gave him “the darkness of someone receiving divine instruction to commit violence.” Put those together, and you get a dark ride with real teeth.
He also kept a piece of the original. Mark Acheson plays Charlie, and Mike fought for that casting. Then he fed Charlie’s lines to Rohan Campbell himself, off camera, for most of the shoot. And yes, there is the viral Nazi scene, a direct nod to Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (“That one is literally just for me“).
Why it worked for us: fans get their “garbage day” moment and a familiar face, but the movie is not a beat-for-beat remake. It respects the original without being stuck in it.
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V/H/S/85: Breaking the Anthology Format
V/H/S is built on stand-alone found footage segments. Mike broke that rule. His story, No Wake, is split into two connected segments placed apart in the anthology, so the link only clicks after you have seen the whole thing.
He also flipped who the story is about. Managers had passed on the idea for years as too dark and too risky. Mike’s question was simple: What if we focused on the victims instead? What if they woke up and got to talk about what they experienced?
Why it worked for us: the horror is not a masked killer. “It’s not necessarily a knife-wielding maniac,” he said. “It’s you go to the grocery store, and you don’t know if you’re gonna come home.” Even set in 1985, it feels uncomfortably current.
Beware Boiúna: Taking the Creature Feature Seriously
Creature features carry a stigma. You have your Jaws and Jurassic Park, but giant snake movies usually end up closer to Anaconda; fun, but kind of dumb. Mike told us he did not want to make that kind of movie.
So he went to the actual Amazon. They shot near Leticia, in Colombia, on real river water in brutal heat and humidity. Half the film is subtitled, locals from the area were cast as non-actors, and William Friedkin’s Sorcerer was the touchstone.
Before filming, the crew even asked permission from a local healer. “I wanna go in. I wanna be respectful,” Mike said. The healer blessed the production and named Mike the father of his crew:
These are your children. Like, do right by them.
Then a flash flood wiped out a set, and they had to shoot it a different way.
Why it worked for us: the explosions and stunts are real, the snake hunts on land and in the water, and nobody is safe. Arthur called it “gritty” and “raw,” and a midway twist caught us both off guard. In Mike’s own words from March,
Ours is very… a little bit more grim. But in a really great way.
Meaghan gave it a 7.5 and Arthur gave it an 8. You can read our full Beware Boiúna review for the details.
Mike P. Nelson Is Directing Saw 11: What We Know
Here is what has been announced. Mike is directing the next installment in the Saw franchise for Blumhouse Atomic Monster, which recently took over the rights, with James Wan producing. Gregory Weidman and Geoff Tock are writing the script. Wan called Mike’s voice “raw” and “distinctive,” with “an inventive approach to the genre.”
As Meaghan pointed out, the Saw movies “have been kinda interesting depending on who’s tried to do what with them.“
So the real question is this: if Mike sticks to his own rule, what does a Saw movie look like that could stand on its own without the name? Based on Wrong Turn, Silent Night, Deadly Night, V/H/S/85, and Beware Boiúna, we are very curious to find out.