I am a mother now, and I'm a mother to a son, and I want him to go into the world a feminist. I want him to go into the world with compassion for humanity.
It's hard to prep a movie in five days and shoot it in five days and cut it in barely any time. You don't get quite enough time to make the thing, let alone tell the story.
I think there is really something we need to examine about the notion of careers, and are women encouraged and given the same opportunities to have vital healthy careers in which they are challenged by certain things, they try new things, they struggle, maybe they stumble, maybe they fail, and then there's more room to succeed as well.
Genre mechanics are really tricky because if you pay too much attention to the idea of rules of genre, it becomes pretty stale, pretty fast.
One of the things you hear about when studying the nature of fanaticism is that a lot of the time, people don't start as fanatics. They shift and evolve into that state. That's a process, a systematic process of losing your identity and sense of self.
For me, there's something about a certain kind of genre film that has real potency in its emotional landscape.
I feel like, generally, the golden eras of cinema seem to be in moments of incredible political turmoil and strife and struggle.
What makes a lot of suspenseful films work is very, very particular points of view and very subjective use of the camera.
I don't think I could have had a better experience than I did with 'Girlfight.' It was a humbling experience to be so well received. And it was equally humbling to be ripped to pieces with 'Aeon Flux.'
I get why we don't want to be in pain, but there's something very essential about what happens when we're in pain and some of the growth that can come from it if we stare at it straight in the face.
The best horror walks a line that's completely on a psychological level, not needing the typical tropes of traditional horror filmmaking, then also having to tease out those elements in a way that makes the audience feel like they know what they're in.
I grew up in the Midwest. I understand a sense of the small-town mentality, small-town social politics.
When horror films are made in times of political strife, I think they're not made with an instinct to add to the chaos but to bring shape to it.
Day-to-day concerns really trumped big dreams for quite a while in my life. I was so freaked out about money. And until, honestly, I was in my early thirties and made 'Girlfight,' that anxiety was a real issue: How are you going to live? How are you going to survive?
I have had to really grapple with the fact that, while I wish things could be different at times, I ultimately needed to experience the transformation that comes with pain and loss and sorrow.
When I reflect on the losses I've experienced, I've come to believe that those experiences were transformative, that they shaped who I am.