You just find the best actors that you can. There's an inherent drama within the framework of scares and killings and all that. In 'Scream,' there is very real drama that would be in almost any drama.
If we're going to be considered horror filmmakers, we have to prove it not only to ourselves but to the audience that we can actually make something scary.
I use myself as the barometer to gauge what is scary. I like to think if something scares me, then there's a very good chance an audience will feel the same way.
The one negative to horror is that it's always law of diminishing returns. When you go in the funhouse, the ride is never scary the second time. You will never have that pure experience as when you first watch it.
Scary is good. Kids like going to a movie and being really scared rather than fake scared.
I was raised by boys. I can hold my own, I can fight, and I love horror movies - simply for the scare factor and the surrealism.
The business of horror movies goes up and down, and people are always like, 'It's working,' 'It's not working,' but generally, I think if you make a good movie that's scary, people will come.
One thing I know that's true about horror fans of any color is they like to be scared. And the easiest place to be scared is in a new thing.
I don't like to get scared - it's not one of the emotions I enjoy. So I have to assume that if there are scary things in my books, they aren't very scary.
Audiences have grown to equate being startled with being scared, and will complain that a movie 'isn't scary enough' if it doesn't have enough jump scares... so that means that a lot of studios will insist on shoving jump scares into a movie, regardless of character or story structure, thinking it 'makes it scarier.'
What I love about watching classic horror films is that they take you on a ride and they obviously make you scared because you're so invested in the characters, you're almost forgetting that oh my God, this is about to scare me.
You have to want the haunted house to scare you. It completely steals your money to go through with one of those people who shrug it all off, who touch the monsters' faces to show they're fake.
Horror films are very functional like comedies. The main thing with a comedy, the big question is "is it funny?" And with horror the question is "is it scary?"
I don't enjoy the boo scare when you're watching a movie and then suddenly there's a big shark on the screen. The only thing they're doing is catching you off guard.
My norm for watching scary movies, what I love about it, is when they work and they scare me, which is not that often I'm afraid. The more you know the genre, your taste becomes a little more rarefied and you take a very particular route to the type of movies you like in the genre. But I still get scared.
It's not that I'm not a horror fan, it's just that the horror scripts I've been sent have been rubbish and obvious. Because they usually are in horror films - it's just about scare factor. You're always one step ahead, you know who's going to die first, you know who's going to survive, you're going to get a jump every twenty minutes.
