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A really good horror film has a story.

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.

Horror movies travel pretty well anyway. They're like action movies: People overseas can watch them and enjoy them, and they're not so culturally specific in terms of their references, and they can follow a good scary story.

Everyone has the opportunity to do a horror film. There's something great about it as an actor. You have to go to places you'd normally never go and be put in situations you would never be put into. You don't get the opportunity in a lot of films to have this kind of acting. It's an interesting challenge.

If you look at that incredible burst of fantastic characters that emerged in the late 19th century/early 20th century, you can see so many of the fears and hopes of those times embedded in those characters. Even in throwaway bits of contemporary culture you can often find some penetrating insights into the real world around us.

People used to always complain that horror films have no stories, that it's all just about kills and stuff like that.

Most of my films have a lot of character development and exploration, whereas in most horror movies the characters are just cardboard.

It is important to consider that the horror movies should - like modern art - not have a too obvious meaning. When you watch them, it is more important what you feel than what you understand.

I have always loved horror very much. I used to write stories for DC's House of Mystery. It was one of my first jobs writing for comics, and I loved it.

I'm always looking for films, but the horror scripts that I get tend to be very repetitive and often not that interesting.