Movies are pieces of film stuck together in a certain rhythm, an absolute beat, like a musical composition. The rhythm you create affects the audience.

Horror stories have always worked on film. It's where they work. That's where vampires and ghosts and UFOs are real. They're not particularly real in life, but they're real on the screen. It's the communal aspect of movie-watching.

From early on, when synthesizers were first introduced into music, I liked the idea that you could get a big sound with them - electronic, but like an orchestra. And I could play it all myself. That was exciting.

Film buffs who don't live in Hollywood have a fantasy about what it's like to be a director. Movies and the people who make movies have such glamour associated with them. But the truth is, it's not like that. It's very different. It's hard work.

There are two different stories in horror: internal and external. In external horror films, the evil comes from the outside, the other tribe, this thing in the darkness that we don't understand. Internal is the human heart.

The strongest human emotion is fear. It's the essence of any good thriller that, for a little while, you believe in the boogeyman.

It [horror genre] never dies. It just keeps getting re­invented and it always will. Horror is a universal language; we're all afraid. We're born afraid, we're all afraid of things: death, disfigurement, loss of a loved one. Everything that I'm afraid of, you're afraid of and vice versa. So everybody feels fear and suspense.