‘The Omen,’ ‘The Exorcist,’ those movies for me are the quintessential horror movies that still scare me as an adult.
It’s funny, I can sit through the worst horror film ever made but even a quite good romantic comedy can drive me nuts.
I don’t watch horror movies because they scare me!
If you think about it, a lot of great horror films have bad sequels just because the market demands you to make the other one right away. Thank God no one in the ‘Evil Dead’ family thinks that way.
I tend to fall more into the fun horror genre than the traumatic horror genre. I love the films where you’re laughing as much as screaming, but that doesn’t mean I don’t like the other ones.
‘American Horror Story’ is dark, so you shouldn’t be expecting too much happiness.
I thought I was going to be a horror story writer. My influences were horror writers, like Rich Matheson, Ray Bradbury and Bram Stoker.
The thing that makes a great genre movie is one that’s not just entertainment, not just horror or sci-fi or whatever. The ones I love are the genre pictures with some subversive message underlying it all.
Ask anyone, and they’ll tell you that most of the good horror films made in the U.S. are indie films. You might get ‘The Ring’ or ‘The Others,’ but most are independently produced.
I grew up such a horror fan, it’s kinda cool being named ‘Scream Queen.’ I like that.
One goes on with the blithe belief that who you really are is transparent to everybody. Then you realise, with some horror, that in fact it’s not. So all you can do is keep muddying the waters a bit.
To me, the horror genre is the genre of non-denial. It’s about admitting that there is evil in the world and recognizing that there is evil within us and that we’re not in control and that the things that we are afraid of must be confronted in order for us to relinquish that fear.
When I was younger, I’d make a point of driving to the middle of nowhere and spending an evening with just me, the wind, and the moon. Your skin crawls up an octave. This is what I tap into when I’m working on horror films. I’m just afraid a time will come when I lose touch with that part of myself.
I never attended a creative writing class in my life. I have a horror of them; most writers groups moonlight as support groups for the kind of people who think that writing is therapeutic. Writing is the exact opposite of therapy.
With ‘The Sixth Sense,’ my dad and I discussed how this was not so much a horror story as a story about communication. I understudied with my dad, in a sense. It made a huge difference.
Before I start, I search the internet for hours looking for inspiration – I look at horror movies, special effects, everything. Then, I take a bunch of screenshots, and pile them together in Photoshop to create a story for myself. I plan it out in my head, but I don’t ever practice beforehand.
I was always a fan of horror films as a kid.
I grew up as an artist. Science fiction allows for design and creatures and guns and all the stuff that I like as well. So I think most of the films I make, I’m sure, will be in that category. But I can also see myself making a film like ‘Black Hawk Down,’ and I could also totally do horror.
I think crafting a new, effective horror movie is not just about when night falls and things get scary. It’s about setting a tone and mood that permeates throughout the entire movie. So even during the daytime, things are never quite safe-feeling.
I completely remember the horror I felt when my pits started getting hairy. I would walk with my arms pressed against my sides.
Truth is, I love all the horror guys and girls: Gord Rollo, Shirley Jackson, Harlan Ellison, Ramsey Campbell, Dan Simmons, Thomas Ligotti. Each one of them brings something wonderfully different and, because I love the genre, I love those who love the genre, too. And I hope the genre ends up loving me back.
When I was eight, my piano teacher played seven or eight notes, and I sang them. She stopped and looked at me in shock! That was the first time I’d gotten that reaction. I’d had looks of horror, but never shock in a positive way.
There was a period around Columbine when horror films were being kind of assailed by the government. The studios got very afraid that they were going to be sued, and studios at about that time were all being taken over by corporations.
My favorite movies are gory horror films. I love Faulkner. I wanted to see the most painful things possible.
One of my favorite horror films of the Nineties was ‘Event Horizon.’
Development of ‘Bloodborne’ and sinking into the battle of the hunter and the unique horror world was not only an exciting experience but it also allowed me to re-acknowledge the charm of a fantasy world and the intrigue of ‘Dark Souls’ for me.
I don’t have any horror stories of trying to start as a comedian and eating it constantly on stage.
There are a lot of horror films out there that are nasty, but what’s nasty isn’t necessarily scary.
I wish I could fill every young man who reads these pages with an utter dread and horror of poverty. I wish I could make you so feel its shame, its constraint, its bitterness that you would make vows against it.
I want to start off making the kinds of films that I loved growing up as a kid. Fun horror films that are scary but at the same time, after you finish the movie, it leaves you excited to see more.
The horror genre gets you in touch with our primal instincts as a people more than any other genre I can think of. It gives you this chance to sort of reflect on who we are and look at the sort of uglier side that we don’t always look at, and have fun with that very thing.
When there’s a great horror movie, people are like, ‘Horror’s back!’ And when there’s a series of not so good ones, ‘Horror’s dead.’ I think it’s all about the quality. When there are one or two good horror movies in a row, people come out interested again.
Film directing is really undermined if you attempt to do it by committee because there has to be a single vision as to how to tell a story. It’s like if you were at a campfire, and everyone is taking turns to give one sentence in telling a horror story. It would be a mess – it’s not going to make sense.
‘Dark Circles’ is a great relationship/character piece and also a horror film. It tinkered with the genre, which I loved. I was sick of seeing the same thing, sick of people just trying to get a movie made.
I joke and I say, ‘I need to go back to make a supernatural horror film just to so that I can make a movie that’s grounded again.’
I’m a huge fan of science fiction and fantasy – not so much horror because I get a bit scared.
People who have been made to suffer by certain things cannot be reminded of them without a horror which paralyses every other pleasure, even that to be found in reading a story.
I think Britain has this tradition which suggests that if you make the readers laugh too much, you can’t really be serious. Whereas, I think one of the functions laughter can perform in a book, as in life, is that it’s a reaction to genuine horror.
Well it’s always been an element of the horror film to show us the gross out. I mean that’s one option for all filmmakers making a horror film and it’s not something I’ve found myself above either.
Whoever makes an attempt on a man’s life, on a man’s liberty, on a man’s honour inspires us with a feeling of horror in every way analogous to that which the believer experiences when he sees his idol profaned.
I hate horror movies.
I like to use horror as allegory.
I loved Westerns as a little kid, and I loved horror films.
Writing my novel ‘The Narrow Road to the Deep North,’ I came to conclude that great crimes like the Death Railway did not begin with the first beating or murder on that grim line of horror in 1943.
I love doing horror with comedy twists and I think it’s a really fun genre.
I see horror as part of legitimate film. I don’t see it as an independent genre that has nothing to do with the rest of cinema.
I do genre films because I like them or because I need the money. I make a star’s salary when I do horror because I can still open a movie in Italy or Spain or Germany.
When I was a kid, I loved horror films. I used to stay up on Saturday night to watch.
And I’m auditioning right now for a movie, and then I have a script that I’m reading right now for a horror film, and I’m meeting for a couple of television shows that I just had yesterday, and pretty much was offered one of them.
It’s not scary to make a horror film because you get to pull back the curtain and see that none of it’s real. When you’re watching one, the terror bombards you.
Not many people realize this, but I’m a really squeamish guy. When I watch other horror films that are really over-the-top with their blood and guts, I cannot watch it.
I would be concerned if one of my children were constantly watching nothing but horror films or indulging in gothic literature without the balance of other types of art and entertainment. I do think that’s a danger.
Lots of people I know have bootlegged tapes of performances and if they play it I will be transported back sometimes with happiness, sometimes with horror.
Japanese horror films take the business of being frightening seriously. There is no attempt at postmodernism or humour. They are incredibly melancholy, with a strong emotional core, while remaining absolutely terrifying.
