The scares are the easier part of scary movies. The hard part of scary movies is what leads up to the scares.
Films do have suspense and tensions and scares and jumps, and I like to write things that have both in them, comedy and horror, but sometimes they are hard to balance.
I think about the movie 'Jaws.' They had this state-of-the-art animatronic shark, but it kept breaking down, which kept delaying the filming. So, they had to use it very sparingly, but it became why the film was so good because you never saw the shark. You only heard about it, and it was suggested.
My thinking was that today's spectator is so well-versed in film language that all theories about suspense, as argued by Dreyer and Hitchcock, on what makes you scared in cinema, can be ditched. It's the spectator, finally, who's going to construct the menace and the fear.
I think the hardest part about making a scary film is about being able to retain the mystery, especially when it comes to supernatural stuff.
To me, sound is a crucial component to, really, any moviegoing experience, but particularly with suspense films or thrillers. I think you need the audience to become subtly really attuned to the soundscape in, like, this uncomfortable way.
'Duel' is one of the greatest suspense films of all time.
What makes a lot of suspenseful films work is very, very particular points of view and very subjective use of the camera.
In some ways, the audience becomes complacent when they go to a horror film. And so it's fun to take that attitude and then to upend it.
