Unsettling Themes Quotes

It's not like I particularly have an interest in creepiness for creepy's sake.

Kafka is not interested in documenting the manners and mores of any particular place; he is not interested in probing the psyche of individual characters.

I think that's the great thing about all 'Black Mirror' episodes - it really leaves you with this feeling of not knowing how to feel.

God, people say 'Black Mirror' was horrible - it's nothing compared to the stuff that happens in 'Grimms' Fairy Tales.' It's mind-bending.

In fiction, we are not bound by social convention, so the things that mystify and unsettle are allowed to rise to the surface.

I think of horror films as art, as films of confrontation.

People have said that my films are very difficult to watch, that they're experiences you are put through rather than ones you enjoy, and it's true.

incurable lover of the grotesque

Ambiguity and the horror of possibility play a part in so many of my favorite horror stories: Shirley Jackson's 'We Will Always Live in the Castle,' Mark Danielewski's 'House of Leaves,' Victor LaValle's 'Big Machine,' Charlotte Perkins Gilman's 'The Yellow Wallpaper,' Stewart O'Nan's 'The Speed Queen,' and so many more.

I find the macabre fascinating; it's all over history.

I love being entertained sure, but the movies that I live for, the movies that I buy and think about and stay in my mind are the movies that entertain me but leave me with something a little uncomfortable to grapple with in the lobby.

A good novel should be deeply unsettling - its satisfactions should come from its authenticity and its formal coherence. We must feel something crucial is at stake.

A lot of our music came out of a lot of weird psychology and weird emotions. When you play the whole body of work, you get tossed all over the place. It's not easy listening. It's not even comfortable to listen to.

I find most American films annoy me because their third act tends to be tying up loose ends and returning to moral values and killing the monster. I think most of the scripts I read to tend to go in that direction and I find that very, very unsatisfying. I want the stories to have loose ends and to pose some questions - or even say things that aren't too comfortable.

I have a sort of a fetish for insects, clockwork, monsters, dark places, and unborn things

I didn't sleep the night I finished 'Sister Hills.' It was so unsettling. I felt really wild. I didn't have a clue. It's a very loaded subject, and I did not know what I had. I was interested in watching how choices unfold over time. It's a story that's raising questions.

My fiction is only just over the horizon. I present a world that's different but it's familiar enough that it freaks people out a little.

This kind of art - the dystopic future kind of art - is designed to make you uncomfortable.

I like old school horror movies like Exorcist. I always loved scaring myself and I don't know at all what that's about.