113 Quotes by Mike Flanagan

Thanks to 'It,' you're going to see the studios take a lot more chances on a very specific vision. An R-rated horror film about children being eaten by a monster that lives in a sewer is not normally something that a studio would throw their weight behind. But we've seen the success of it, which props everyone up.

When horror is about something - capital-A about - that's when it's really landing.

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.'

For me it's about creating and sustaining tension for as long as possible, and I'm not generally interested in allowing that tension to be deflated, especially by a jump scare.

At home, people are more likely to be distracted than in a theatrical environment. They're checking their phones, pausing to get a snack, or sometimes jumping from show to show.

Building and sustaining tension is always my priority, so home entertainment provides challenges to that.

I'm wide open to evidence of the supernatural, but I also think that the majority of those experiences are probably natural phenomena we don't understand just yet.

Well when I hear 'slasher' I think about the 80s.

Horror is fascinating because it's so seasonal and it's like you've got these periods where slasher movies are in and it's like everyone loves them. Next thing you know zombies are in. Then vampires are acceptable.