Brad Anderson Quotes

You have a book like 'The Shining,' where the hotel is scary - but scarier because it's the haunted house of Jack Torrance's heart.

'The Shining' scares me so much.

I think my favorite horror films are really grounded in human psychology, which is to say I think through sort of extreme dislocations of reality.

I have gone through the most terrible affair that could possibly happen; only imagine, my shadow has gone mad; I suppose such a poor, shallow brain, could not bear much; he fancies that he has become a real man, and that I am his shadow.

A lot of modern horror can leave me cold, and I'm not good with blood and gore and all that stuff. It's not fun for me. There's nothing entertaining about watching a film like that.

'The Thirteenth Tale' is reminiscent of 'Wuthering Heights' because you're never sure if it's a ghost or if people have gone a bit mad; that feeling that's been channelled all the way from Bronte is a really exciting one.

When you think of the 'Exorcist,' you think of Linda Blair and pea soup and all this madness, but really if you look at the first half of that film, the stuff between her and Ellen Burstyn is so naturalistic and so real.

Fear has disappeared. No more fear. In Asia, it is different. They've discovered again the fear and the psychology of the characters. Without psychology, the horror film doesn't exist.

Once you've been talked to by voices, it's not possible to go back to a world where talking voices is not possible.

The only thing I find difficult to watch - horror movies - not that I don't like them. Like 'The Shining,' it's one of my favorite movies, but it's terrifying. I feel like I've watched a marathon afterwards.

Even my pathological love of Japan and its beauties, glories and eccentricities is sorely tested by 'The Grudge 2,' from Takashi Shimizu, a movie so bewildering and impenetrable that I believe it siphoned off a good 40 IQ points.

I don't write that much horror. People tell me my books are scary, but they're not really; I don't go there.

With 'The Sixth Sense,' my dad and I discussed how this was not so much a horror story as a story about communication. I understudied with my dad, in a sense. It made a huge difference.

A film like 'The Sixth Sense' burns an image of who you are into people's minds.

'Hereditary' is unabashedly a horror film. In a lot of ways, it's in dialogue with other horror films. But I do know that it was important for me that the film functioned first as a family drama. I know that I'm never affected by anything if I'm not invested in the people to whom the genre things are happening.

For me, 'The Haunting of Hill House' is a series about life after a haunting, what happens after the credits roll in most horror films.

What's important to me about horror stories is to look at what's actually horrifying about humanity, instead of shining a flashlight on it and running away giggling.

I stopped watching horror movies after I watched 'Candyman' when I was - I don't know, fifteen or something. I remember my sister rented it, 'Candyman,' and it really, really scared me. And so it was only after I found myself in a horror film that I really went back and kind of rediscovered the genre.

The Shining' is one of the few horror movies that I actually like and it actually scared me.

'Martha Marcy May Marlene' is excellent. I adore how the film is both grounded in realism and, at the same time, it has an ethereal, nightmarish atmosphere.

Men went mad and were rewarded with medals.

Once the voices are in your head, it's either make a movie or kill a lot of people.

It was the first time that I came face to face with madness and feared it and was fascinated by it.

Sam Fuller and 'Shock Corridor' can only be conjured as a mantra. 'Shock Corridor' is a classic work of art - it's unique. It comes from the unique experience of being Sam Fuller and yes, there's always that element of 'Shock Corridor' hovering around the picture, but never specifically. In fact, I didn't even screen it because it's in us. It's in me anyway. It's in me. It was a way of conjuring up support just by saying the name, 'Shock Corridor,' as I was going to shoot. Poor Sam [Fuller]...

I am interested in madness. I believe it is the biggest thing in the human race, and the most constant. How do you take away from a man his madness without also taking away his identity? Are we sure it is desirable for a man's spirit not to be at war with itself, or that it is better to be serene and ready to go to dinner than to be excited and unwilling to stop for a cup of coffee, even?