A mission to Rangoon we had been accustomed to regard with feelings of horror. But it was now brought to a point. We must either venture there or be sent to Europe.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Horror serves a cathartic role in human society, all throughout the world. It is a way of confronting the darkness, both within and without.
Horror is the natural reaction to the last 5,000 years of history.
It is a mistake to fancy that horror is associated inextricably with darkness, silence, and solitude.
I think that The Eye is a particularly Americanized take on horror.
Horror movies started to wane around the onset of World War II, and after World War II, when all the troops came home, people weren't really interested in seeing horror movies, because they had the real horror right on their front doorsteps.
Europe is so much the home of Horror, with its myths of vampires, werewolves, witchcraft and the undead, yet it's like those myths were exported to Hollywood, leaving Europe the room to develop a new tradition as a way of processing its traumas, particularly the two world wars.
Nowadays it is the fashion to emphasize the horrors of the last war. I didn't find it so horrible. There are just as horrible things happening all round us today, if only we had eyes to see them.
I've been to Uganda and to North Korea and to Eritrea, countless horror spots around the world.
It's not an easy place to be - to write a horror film. You go down the stairs to the dark to find these characters. It's not a place anyone can go, and sometimes it's not a place that you want to go.
Fear has disappeared. No more fear. In Asia, it is different. They've discovered again the fear and the psychology of the characters. Without psychology, the horror film doesn't exist.