They're both [Ethan Hawke and John Travolta] so good. It's hard to explain. But they're consummate professionals and you see the little choices they make - you see it in their eye. You see these little details they do where you go, "That's why they're them."

If you make just a straight scary movie, people are just - you don't know what they're thinking.

Technology has just been the major progression of the last 15 years - instant communication. That stuff has gone so global. That's what's interesting about it. When someone sits down in front of a computer, it's the same everywhere in the world, and it's the same screen looking back at you with the same Google, and there's no individuality to it. So I decided it would be kind of visually uninteresting to have in my films.

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, making a horror movie is about how you can present similar genre familiarities, but present them a little bit differently. Part of what interests me is the nonchalant realism of it, because you don't get that in the big studio horror movies. I like seeing someone walk around a house and sift through the drawers, and things like that, because that reminds me of what I would do, and of weird personal choices that people would make. That, in contrast to seeing someone get chased with a knife, makes it all the more interesting.

All those awkward moments - that's on the cast for doing such an amazing job. I think it was funny on the page, but when they did it, you definitely went, "Oh!" Watching it with a crowd that, like you said, was not expecting it to be funny, but then genuinely finding it funny, is totally a credit to their performances.

I mean PJ - James Ransone - he was a friend of mine, he probably heard all this stuff, but for the rest of the cast [Valley of Violence], we mostly just talked about their characters and things like that. That was the business at hand.