“Very apt for now, because I think it’s just come out on DVD. I’m scared of horror films, and hardly ever see them, but I was just so haunted by the scene at the end at the swimming pool, about which I will say no more because my brain is still trying to work out what happened there. It just shows how, if you’ve got a really low budget, and a really serious intent, you can make people feel uncomfortable. It’s a weird, spooky, melancholy Swedish love story about vampires, which is a big subject at the moment, but it’s hard to imagine a better vampire film. So that would be my number one choice — delightful, strange and disjointing. “That will be the only horror movie on any list of mine. The first time I saw The Exorcist, I had to sleep with the lights on for about four years, so horror is not for me.”

"We’re often talking about ParaNorman as being John Hughes meets John Carpenter, and that was intentional. It was to try and tell a spooky story that was almost… you know, we talked about it like being directed by Sam Raimi as well. It was to try and combine all those elements: All the angst of a movie set in high school, where your issues are more about, you know, being bullied by the kid who lives down the lane, but to couple that with a movie about the more fictional horrors of monsters. I like that play. They’re actually a really good marriage. I’ve talked about ParaNorman being the characters from The Breakfast Club dropped into the plot of The Fog — and The Fog, I would say, would be one of the other influential ones. Right from day one of writing, I think. I love that movie, as bad as it is…"