Oren Peli Quotes & Sayings

“Our lives are pretty calm. Merging on the freeway in the closest you get to risking your life. So what's missing now is that primal emotion of being scared to death, and I think that's why people crave thrills like roller coasters or scary movies. They give you the chance to feel this very primal emotion in a very controlled environment.”

“There is so much misinformation out there. If you give people even a little bit, it gets blown out of proportion then you have to go put out fires. So it's much easier to say, 'No comment.'”

“The thing I find really scary about ghosts and demons is that you don't really know what they are or where they are. They're not very well understood. You don't know what they want from you. So it's the kind of thing you don't even know how to defend yourself against. Anything that's unknown and mysterious is very scary.”

“In many cases your imagination is much more effective than what can be shown. It primes you to know something is about to happen - the anticipation and anxiety is worse than what ends up happening.”

“I've always had better luck learning things on my own. And I really love the challenge of doing it yourself and kind of being alone against the system.”

“One of the advantages of this found footage format is that you can have deliberately badly composed frames. Here we can put a camera in the weirdest angle and it kind of throws you off. You never know what you are supposed to be paying attention to. It's deliberate chaos.”

“Not knowing the thing that's chasing you is a lot scarier than seeing it right in front of you.”

“Even when I was making the first 'Paranormal Activity,' I didn't tell anyone I was making it, not my friends or neighbors or co-workers. I just kind of found that there was nothing to gain by announcing to the world that you're doing something.”

“On 'Paranormal Activity,' it worked to my advantage not to have much of a crew, but on a bigger movie, where you have to work with a larger group of people who basically become your second family for a few months, it can be a great experience. Even though all of my projects are small scale compared to most Hollywood productions.”

“I think the traditional explanation is that demons just find someone, they pick on them and try to break down their spirit so they can... take control of their bodies. Why exactly? I don't know.”