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Horror is so often a 'thinkless' genre, sort of considered popcorn movies, but you really put a lot of, not just heart and soul, but a lot of physical energy into it.

Horror movies can be very interesting because they can deal with intangible subjects that are full of emotion.

Horror is about dreams and heightened states. It really is about taking away the logic on some level and getting right to the emotion of something.

I have a complicated relationship with the horror genre. I love it; I loved it as a kid growing up, and I watched Chiller Theater in New York. So I loved it, but then you do feel if you do it too much, you're stuck there.

One of the difficult things of making a horror sequel in general is because the horror genre is so founded on surprise.

For me, it's very easy to write a horror movie that's just a succession of scary sequences, but it's hard to find horror movies that have a genuine theme to them that are really exploring some aspect of our psychology and our fears.

To me, the horror genre is the genre of non-denial. It's about admitting that there is evil in the world and recognizing that there is evil within us and that we're not in control and that the things that we are afraid of must be confronted in order for us to relinquish that fear.

I've been a fan since I was a kid of that sort of bump-in-the-night stuff. I don't tend to go in too much for the slash-and-burn-'em or the walker kills on 'The Walking Dead.' That stuff's not necessarily the stuff that frightens me or gets me going. It's more the terror of waiting, the thriller aspects, that I find compelling.

I have been blessed to have been working since I was 11. I think horror is an underrated genre. When done really well like in 'The Ruins', it pays homage to some of the stuff I really love in the '70s and incurs some of that energy the fanbase really wants to see.