I'm doing an over-the-shoulder shot on a dog. I'm putting the camera behind the dog's shoulder. This is craziness. You just accept it in the movie [Valley of Violence], but when you make the movie, it's the weirdest thing. There's dog coverage, like it's a person.

We've become so postmodern as an audience and we're so familiar with the style of horror movies that they all kind of feel the same. I think if you can do something a little bit unexpected, then you as a filmmaker end up being one step ahead again. I think that's the key.

To me it's not so much that the movies are slow-paced as much as they are about spending time building a relationship between the audience and the characters. If you don't spend an adequate amount of time doing this, then how can you expect to scare anyone?

It's very important to me to find ways to relate the audience to the characters. This is the first thing to go in most mainstream horror films.

I do think, even though I've made these genre movies, there's what happens in the movie and then there's what the movie's about. And for me, what the movie's about is so much more interesting.

We can't make a giant sprawling movie. We're going to make a small movie. And what we got is what I could get, performance-wise.

The bad guys, when they start getting picked off, they're upset that their friends died, too. But that's the thing. That's what life is. It's that weird gray area.