Scott Derrickson Quotations

I think Laura could be more famous if she wanted to be. My impression is she is very selective with what she does.

I wanted the audience to leave the film with the feeling that they must ask themselves what they believe. Specifically, what do they think about the existence of the spiritual realm?

It's the difference between art and propaganda or quality entertainment and propaganda. I'm not interested in convincing. The pulpit in churches is for that purpose. The pulpit for politicians is for that purpose. It doesn't belong in movies.

The benefit of being able to flashback during the courtroom scenes to varying perspectives on the possession and exorcism of Emily Rose allows the audience to make up their own mind about what they think may or may not have happened. My intention is to make a film that provokes people to ask themselves what they believe about evil, what they believe about the demonic.

I certainly wasn't interested in inserting my own point of view. The questions themselves are interesting. There are very intelligent people who come down on both sides of the argument about the existence of angels and demons. For me, it's impossible to live without reckoning -- honestly and deeply -- with those questions, because how you answer them is going to affect how you live, how you think.

We love bringing verisimilitude to audiences, hopefully having experiences you'll never have.

At the end of the day, a "jump scare" scares the audience for the moment. Slow burn horror ideas scare people forever.

What everyone is always afraid of is the unknown, or the unfamiliar. You got to have a look for a character that is mysterious and menacing, and doesn't quite look like what we've seen before.

That's to me what always is compelling about villains. I am much more interested in how they think than in what they even do.

I think the Harry Potter movies are proof that audiences love that stuff. They love the idea of magical objects and they like learning the rules of those objects and what they do.

There's a whole, that is a whole subgenre within martial arts cinema. The supernatural martial arts movie. Particularly within Asian cinema.

Martial arts is the kind of action that does tie in well to the supernatural.