Mike Flanagan Quotes

Scaring someone's the hardest thing to do, and that's why most of these scary movies are not scary. They're sick, but not scary. There's a lot of sickness out there, of people who then sit there and watch it, which I think is absolutely dismaying.

Some horror movies are just for shock value, so it doesn't really feel scary.

I think the way to create a lot of terror in a haunted house film is to have a bunch of people who have no idea what's happening to them, and you sort of live the movie through their eyes.

A lot of horror movies just look at how they can scare people, and no matter which character dies, you don't ever really feel enough to actually care.

It's really hard to scare people on network television. You've got to be smart about it. You've got to parcel out the scares.

I mean do women like to get the crap scared out of them at the movies? Sure. Of course.

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.'

The most fun part of making a horror movie is watching it with an audience.

Well it's always been an element of the horror film to show us the gross out. I mean that's one option for all filmmakers making a horror film and it's not something I've found myself above either.

I enjoy scaring people too much to let it go!

As a kid, I liked the 'Halloween' movies and 'Nightmare On Elm Street' and all that kind of stuff. But as an adult, I really don't watch much horror, to be honest.

Number one is that it just scares people! Your hair is standing up on your arms, or at least that there's a few moments when you're jumping. That's what makes it a good horror movie.

Growing up, I was a huge fan of horror movies. There's nothing more fun than going into a movie with a smile because you know you're going to be scared to death. There's something thrilling about sitting there waiting for a scare to happen.

Horror movies have never been my thing. I love psychological thrillers like 'The Exorcist', 'The Shining', even though they scare the living daylights out of me.

I think the violence in 'The Hills Have Eyes' and 'High Tension' is much more traumatic than 'Piranha.'

In horror, character development is often pushed aside in favor of the shock value. The best genre movies to me are movies like The Shining. You had a connection to the characters in that film.

I loved growing up and going to haunted houses and being scared. I loved watching 'The Exorcist,' 'Candyman' and all sorts of scary movies.

I love horror. I love 'The Shining,' 'Friday the 13th,' 'Halloween,' all those kinds of things. I love zombies, especially '28 Days Later' and '28 Weeks Later,' where the zombies are going faster than the George Romero ones. I love being scared; there's something that's awesome about your heart rate going up like that.

With a horror movie, you don't want to anticipate where things are going to go.

We think craft is important, and the irony has always been that horror may be disregarded by critics, but often they are the best-made movies you're going to find in terms of craft. You can't scare people if they see the seams.

I think film had a terrible effect on horror fiction particularly in the 80s, with certain writers turning out stuff as slick and cliched as Hollywood movies.

I feel the horror audience is a great audience, and I would ideally make a movie that would give them as much energy as they're willing to give to the picture.

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 don't watch horror movies because they scare me!

The first 'Scream' was great for me in some ways, but in others it was... a challenge.