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.

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.

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.

I don't really get that nervous about whether people like it. You can't do anything about that. It's more technical. You spend two years of your life obsessing, picturing sound details, and you work so hard to make a movie a certain way, that you get there, and you're like - is it loud enough or whatever, so that this experience with everybody in this room is the fairest chance I can get. And then if you like it, cool, and if you don't, whatever.

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

I'm not sure I understand the compulsion to label things.

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.