When you sit down to write a film, you direct it in your head. If you are writing a scene, you are watching the scene. And maybe it's different when you are writing a novel because you are thinking of it in terms of being read. But films are only consumed one way - through the eyes and the ears.

I mean I met James Wan at film school. That's where we met. I didn't go to film school to find someone else to work with. I was thinking I would go and learn to direct and go and be a director like everyone else at school.

I think I've had a lot of experience with watching other people shepherd my ideas with the 'Saw' films. They made four 'Saw' movies without me. I never really had a protective or fierce policy towards that. I let it go.

Writing a screenplay is an act of faith. First, that it's interesting enough that anyone would want to make it. Secondly, that anybody would want to watch it, let alone enjoy it.

Usually with me, the ideas I have for movies just sort of pop into my head. I've read a bunch of screenwriting books over the years and, to be honest, they're mostly pretty crappy.

I'm not actually terrified of technology. Though I'm certainly not an early adopter, either.

When I directed the third 'Insidious' film I loved it so much that I decided this is what I want to do from now on. I don't even think I would write something as a screenplay now with no intention of directing it.

It is nice to be validated by audiences and have people come up to you after a screening and tell you that they loved the movie. It never gets old.

Saw' was a film that James Wan and I came up with back in Australia and we were just hoping anyone, literally, anyone would make that film and if nobody would give us the money we were going to shoot it in a garage somewhere.

For me in a horror film, just looking down a long corridor and seeing somebody standing there, the simplest thing in the world, has a really seismic impact to me.

I mean, I certainly wouldn't want to paint myself as, you know, the evangelist for practical effects or some sort of anti CG guy because it's really a tool. Like filmmaking is this toolbox and you use what's appropriate in relation to the story.

It's always an interesting experience with the 'Saw' films, when a sequel comes out that I didn't have anything to do with, creatively, because here's this idea, this story, and this character that I created for James Wan, but now it doesn't need me anymore.

If you look back at a film like 'Dawn of the Dead' - You can either watch it as a straight-up genre film and have fun with zombies being shot, or you can look at it as a metaphor for consumerism. Or a metaphor for the Vietnam war.

If you have a year where a few good horror films come out, all of the sudden, horror is back and everyone's talking about how it's a vintage year for horror.

I'd always had this romantic idea, ever since I've been writing scripts, that I would travel one day and pull up stumps, as we say in Australia. It's a cricket reference. You can Google it. Pull up stumps in some country like Italy or Spain and do my little Truman Capote thing.

The good thing about directing a screenplay that you've written is that you see the film in your head as you're writing it and then you see those decisions through to the end.

The good thing with 'Insidious' and 'The Further' is that it's so nebulous, this supernatural world, that it allows you to bend things. There's a lot of room, it's very malleable, like how in the second film we had a lot of time travel.

James Wan is somebody who doesn't have any problem coming in and directing somebody else's script, he'll be the director for hire and he has his own style and he loves that.

I really liked that documentary, 'Room 237.'

I don't think humor is something to be afraid of.

I think that's the problem, when you're a young filmmaker and you're starting out, you don't know people, you're easily lead, you don't know the right people to talk to, you really need guides.

Australia, most of the filmmakers there write a film and they direct it. There's a lot of writer/directors there, because nobody wants to write a script and then let it go when they've had that much of a personal investment to it, because you're not getting paid huge amounts of money in Australia to direct.

The great thing about 'The Exorcist' is it's dead serious horror. No comedy, no self-reference, it's a documentary style.

The most fun part of making a horror movie is watching it with an audience.