'A Place Where Beauty and Terror Merge'

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I don't turn things down based on the quantity of sex, violence or profanity they contain. That's never been a consideration.. My only question is how appropriate is it to that particular story.

My view is that those gatekeepers better not apply those same standards to the Bible, because if they do they'll have to throw it out along with all their R-rated films. It's a very profane, sexual, violent book. It doesn't flinch at any of those things. But it portrays them and portrays those things for wonderfully moral purposes.

You don't hear sermons or read books about evil or hell or damnation or sin, and these were thing that were on the lips of Jesus constantly, not to mention the other writers of scripture. I believe it's because we're afraid of them and they make us uncomfortable and they take us out of our comfort zone. The American church is becoming sadly addicted to its own comfort, wanting only its own protection, and I think it's unwilling to live with the discomfort that comes with reckoning with those dark subjects. By considering everything dark and horrific to be off limits, the church has really resigned a lot of ground to the secular arts and secular artists, which is really tragic, because it wasn't that way through most of Church history.

The basic answer I suppose has to be yes. I'm trying to portray human life in its totality. I'm trying to get at moral and spiritual subjects from a different point of view than most Christians usually take creatively. In the case of Emily Rose, my goal with the film was not to propagate any particular point of view. I just really saw that story as a great opportunity to usher the audience into a mental space where they would have to ask themselves some very significant questions, no matter what they believe.

Doing the research for this movie was really horrible, it was very scary, and I felt very oppressed by it. I'll never do that again. I'll never dive into research in this kind of material again. It was the least enjoyable experience I've ever had working on anything. I read about two dozen books on this subject matter and it was just oppressive.. Once I got out of the research phase and got writing, then that became very different. It became energizing. I think the idea that you sort of take a good hard look at the things that really scare you, and by doing that one of two things is going to happen: you'll be either more scared because you're not finished dealing with it, which isn't necessarily bad either. Or you're going to leave a little more equipped so you can deal with it.

I think this movie is going to do both. Some people will probably be even more freaked out by the subject matter when they leave, but that's not bad. I think that people ought to be afraid. If they haven't reckoned with what they believe about the demonic they should be afraid. As Christians, we don't need to be afraid of the devil or the demonic. I do think that the power of God and the power of Christ is greater. But that doesn't mean they're not out there and they're not working on us. I think they're out there.

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