I love when you go to a horror film with real horror fans and everybody's there watching, getting involved and screaming. That's when it's most alive and exciting for me.
Screaming. Did I mention the screaming? Screaming is usually associated with horror films and roller coasters. This is why I usually look like I've just watched a horror film on a rollercoaster. Kids love to scream. Frightened, happy, bored. They scream. I've actually learned to love the sound of a vacuum cleaner. It's just so peaceful.
With The Exorcist we said what we wanted to say. Neither one of us view it as a horror film. We view it as a film about the mysteries of faith. It's easier for people to call it a horror film. Or a great horror film. Or the greatest horror film ever made. Whenever I see that, I feel a great distance from it.
Horror has been very good to me in my career. Doing horror films is for the fans and helps keep that part of my career alive.
As a kid I was into horror. I loved horror. Horror was huge. I was always into horror. Goosebumps for me was massive growing up. Horror for me was always a big thing.
Because I am known in the horror genre now, I try and do at least one horror movie a year for my fans, my fans have been so good to me.
I grew up on all sorts of horror - Hammer Horror and Vincent Price's 'Theatre Of Blood.' I loved the hidden, scary layers, but there wasn't that much around for youngsters in terms of horror books. I can remember reading Stephen King's 'Salem's Lot' and 'Cujo,' but I thought there should be more for teenaged horror fans.
The next film I'm making is a horror film, and I'm making it with A24. It's a dark break-up movie that becomes a horror film, set in Sweden. That's all I can really say now. It's called 'Midsommar.' Everybody's been spelling it wrong. It's 'midsummer' in Swedish.
If one horror film hits, everyone says, 'Let's go make a horror film.' It's the genre that never dies.
I tend to fall more into the fun horror genre than the traumatic horror genre. I love the films where you're laughing as much as screaming, but that doesn't mean I don't like the other ones.
I had always loved horror films, so I wanted to do something in the horror genre but wanted it to be sweet and charming at the same time. Because there's a difference between watching horror, where you can leave it behind, and writing horror, where you have to live in it for months and months at a time.
I think metal and horror definitely go hand in hand. Even when you go to a horror convention and meet the fans, nine out of 10 times if they're not wearing some sort of horror shirt, they're wearing a shirt with a metal band on it.
The safest genre is the horror film. But the most unsafe - the most dangerous - is comedy. Because even if your horror film isn't very good, you'll get a few screams and you're okay. With a comedy, if they don't laugh, you're dead.
Horror fans need horror, okay? They don't need little worms squirming around going down your throat. To them, that's not horror.
It's intriguing to me, when I see a horror script, or something like that, that's actually original. I think that's why I love 'Stranger Things,' because it's not just horror, it's everything, and when they use horror it's right.
When horror turns into gore, when you show the monster, the killings, and the blood, it loses its suggestive powers. It loses part of what makes a horror film a horror film, which is that the images you see develop in your brain and you become the one imagining what you are not seeing on screen.
I'd love to continue my career in Hollywood - I'd love to do another action film, or a romantic comedy, or horror. I love horror films.