It's funny, because I don't think of my films as "slow-burn." I don't even know if I was familiar with the phrase until people started labeling me with it.

Jumpy is the most incredible animal of all time. The movie [Valley of Violence] is the tamest example of what that dog is capable of.

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.

You want to be able to say [to Ethan Hawke's character], "Dude, it's okay," but maybe it's not. Maybe he's not a good person. I don't know. That's the thing about people. There is no real good guy or bad guy [in A Valley Of Violence]. It's all context.

If you ever see the director pulling people aside, that means something's not working. Because you're trying to figure out why it's not working. But we would show up, we would talk about it.

The first half [of Valley of Violence] was to endear you to all these people and give you all these archetypes that you're familiar with, and then the second half, just to see all those archetypes unravel like real people.

I don't think you want to preach to people. I don't think In A Valley Of Violence, and the same with The Sacrament, there's a social commentary and a political element to both the films, but it's not like, "Think this because I think this."