My understanding of life is very existential. I think that we are our bodies. There's nothing else, and when we die, that's it. No afterlife.

But with my last film, Spider it was agony. The money was always disappearing, nobody got paid, it was very difficult - and it's very distracting from the process of making the movie, of course. So I think things have been getting harder and harder.

It was apparent to me that religion was an invented thing, a wish-fulfillment thing, a fantasy thing. It was much more real, dangerous, to accept that mortality was the end for you as an individual. As an atheist, I don't believe in an afterlife, so if you're thinking of murder, if your subject is murder, then that's a physical act of absolute destruction because you're ending something, a body, that is unique. That person never existed before, will never exist again, will not be karmically recycled, will not go to heaven, therefore I take it seriously.

I think of horror films as art, as films of confrontation. Films that make you confront aspects of your own life that are difficult to face. Just because you're making a horror film doesn't mean you can't make an artful film.

At a certain point the audience shouldn't worry about catching every word and understanding every twist and turn, because at a certain point that's pretty much impossible.

If the audience lets that stuff wash over them, you know - almost like music, rather than dialogue - and doesn't fight it, then they'll have a much easier time rather than being sort of frustrated and confused otherwise. But if you get in the right state of mind it really does work quite well.

My dentist said to me the other day: I've enough problems in my life, so why should I see your films?