If you don’t want to be scared in a horror film, don’t close your eyes. Close your ears.

You have to write scenes and design scenes that are scary and horrific, but that are also watchable. I didn't want people to just feel like they got punched in the stomach.

I think in a post-9/11 world, with the images coming back from Iraq, everybody knows more and more people who are going over there... the images on the YouTube phenomenon where the violence is so immediate. Direct people need something stronger to respond to. I think that there's definitely a wave of directors - who are labelled the splat pack - who really, really care about making great scary movies.

Horror is like comedy. Woody Allen's comedy is going to be very different from Ben Stiller's comedy which is going to be different from Adam Sandler's comedy which is going to be different from Judd Apatow's comedy. They're all comedy, but they're all very different types and you can enjoy all of them. Horror is the same way.

I think that horror films have a very direct relationship to the time in which they're made. The films that really strike a film with the public are very often reflecting something that everyone, consciously or unconsciously feeling - atomic age, post 9-11, post Iraq war; it's hard to predict what people are going to be afraid of.

Hopefully we'll get to a point where people realize movies don't cause violence. It just reflects the violence going on in the culture.

I love movies. I mean, I really, really love movies.