I'm pretty demanding with myself and my work, and I always put a lot of pressure on myself. I try to do the best job I can every time.
Fede Alvarez
I watched 'Evil Dead' when I was 12. I was going through all the horror I could grab. I remember going to the video store and asking for something 'real.' And the guy gave me the 'Evil Dead' VHS. When you're 12, you're not supposed to see that.
If you think about it, a lot of great horror films have bad sequels just because the market demands you to make the other one right away. Thank God no one in the 'Evil Dead' family thinks that way.
A good horror movie - it doesn't matter how many comedy horror films there have been before. Doesn't matter how much you think it's going to be funny. A good horror movie will scare the hell out of you... the moment you sit down and you start being exposed to that story, it's going to freeze your blood.
'Evil Dead' was such a big movie in my life. It's one of the few that I really remember when I watched it for the first time. I mean, I don't remember when I first saw 'The Empire Strikes Back,' and it's one of my favourite movies.
In another life, I would love to be the art guy - a production designer or a maybe even a composer.
There's a reason people use CGI: it's cheaper and faster. I hate that.
If you think about it, you can have the best CGI, but you can always tell that it is CGI. Your brain can spot that is not real even though you think it looks cool. Your brain knows the truth, so you don't jump and you don't scream. It was very important for me to expose the audience to real elements.
As a director, there is nothing more fun than seeing an audience screaming and jumping. You are the ultimate puppet master, controlling the emotions of the audience.
I love just about every aspect of the filmmaking except acting. I would never be able to do that, but the rest I really enjoy.
As a storyteller, when you're writing a movie and when you're directing, you want to keep people entertained. That's the whole point, right? It has to be entertaining.
Only really good comedies and really good horror movies get a verbal response out of the audience. People will scream. People will laugh.
I always say that I am a big fan of films but I am an even bigger fan of the filmmaking craft.
'The Omen,' 'The Exorcist,' those movies for me are the quintessential horror movies that still scare me as an adult.
PG-13 horror, I just don't watch that.
There are the horror fans that love the 'Evil Dead' because of the humor, but I'm sure it's not all of them. Not all horror fans love 'Evil Dead' because of the humor, at least not me.
Every day I spend in Hollywood, I start to realize how many films are made with no heart and no love. They just do it for the paycheck, and I cannot imagine making a film that way.
I'm inspired when I find out about something that I didn't know was a remake. An example is, of course, stuff like 'The Fly,' or 'The Thing,' or even 'The Blob.' For our generation, all those things, whether it was 'The Blob' or 'The Fly' or something else, we had no idea they were remakes.
Maybe because I'm a child of the '80s, but for me, a sequel is a story that follows the previous one, and sometimes if you haven't seen the original, then you don't understand the second one. Like 'Back to the Future 2.' If you haven't seen the first one, you're not going to get anything out of 'Back to the Future 2.'
In 'Clockwork Orange,' you're there with your eyes, watching all those things, your brain goes off, ahh, exposes you to so many things, and at the end of the day, it's just like a roller coaster. Why do you jump in a roller coaster? You want a thrill.
It doesn't matter the amount of gore, the amount of shocks that you can have in a movie if the movie's not entertaining, if the story's not entertaining.
A good story will keep you wondering about what's happening, what's going on, where does this go? Now it's going to go that way, now it's going to go that way. It has to do that. If it's predictable, it's just boring.
I'm a big fan of movies, but I'm a bigger fan of filmmaking itself. I fell in love with it when I was very young, and I have always loved to learn the craft, every aspect of it.
I have my pride. I'm a director. I'm not going to go and recreate some other director's vision.
I thought that Hollywood was just for geniuses and that directors come from three generations of directors. I was worried that I was not up to the challenge of making a movie. Then realized that all a director has to do is know what he wants to do.
