Inside Eli Roth's Approach to Modern Horror Filmmaking
Key Takeaways from Don't Kill the Messenger Podcast with Kevin Goetz
Few filmmakers understand the delicate art of scaring audiences quite like Eli Roth. From his breakout hit Cabin Fever to the recent crowd-pleaser Thanksgiving, Roth has built a career on delivering memorable scares while keeping budgets manageable and audiences entertained.
In a candid conversation on Kevin Goetz's podcast "Don't Kill the Messenger," Roth shared insights that go beyond typical filmmaking advice. Here's what movie fans and aspiring filmmakers can learn from a modern master of the genre.
Start with Real Psychology
Effective horror doesn't come from random violence—it taps into genuine psychological fears. For Roth, this understanding was shaped by growing up in Newton, Massachusetts, which he calls "the safest city in America."
"You're in suburbia... Nothing goes wrong. People don't lock their doors. And you're hearing these stories about Kristallnacht and the Nazis," Roth explains. "How can life be so perfect, and then all of a sudden people are gassing each other?"
This disconnect became central to his approach. "I think of what would be my worst nightmare of someone doing to another person," he says. The best horror finds the cracks in our sense of security and exploits them.
Know What Kind of Horror You're Making
One of Roth's most important realizations came during test screenings for Thanksgiving. He had crafted what he thought was a brutal, memorable kill scene, but it backfired spectacularly. "People are having fun [during the test screening], and then they felt like they got punched in the gut," he recalls. The movie did not recover from that. It went suddenly to a place of sadism that nobody was there for."
The lesson? Understand your contract with the audience. "You have to have a playful sense of humor where you really are messing with the audience, but in a fun way," Roth explains. "They know they're in good hands, but they know they're in the hands of a lunatic."
A fun slasher film requires different tonal choices than a disturbing psychological horror film. Pick your lane and stay consistent.
Match Your Budget to Your Risks
Roth's business strategy is simple: the weirder your movie, the cheaper it should be. "On the movies I've directed, my first four or five movies, the combined total budget was like 20 or 25 million, like nothing." This approach let him take creative risks without studio interference.
For mainstream horror, he advises making sure audiences will enjoy the experience. But for experimental work like his cannibal film The Green Inferno? "You make that for three and a half, $4 million."
Practical Effects Still Matter
In our CGI-dominated era, Roth remains committed to practical effects. "I always say do it practical until it's impractical," he explains. When actors get doused with actual blood, their reactions are genuinely different. "You tell the actors it's gonna spray. But we're dowsing 'em. And I'm giving them the signal, like, turn it up, give 'em the fire hose. And you see that reaction," Roth says of a Thanksgiving scene.
The key is to use practical elements to enhance performance, then address technical issues with digital work in post-production.
Take Time for the Moments That Matter
Roth's most controversial technique is his preference for single-camera setups, even when studios push for multiple cameras to save time. His reasoning is both technical and artistic: "We're lit for a wide. So if you put a camera there and it's on telephoto, the image is flat and the lighting is shit."
More importantly, actors respond differently when they know you're taking time to make them look good. "When you take the time to move the camera this close and light it... the actor acts differently. They're like, 'Oh, this director gets it.'"
Learn by Doing
Before directing, Roth worked every job he could find on film sets. This proved invaluable when making Cabin Fever on an impossibly tight budget. "No one would say, I've watched a lot of basketball, let me just go play for the Lakers," he observes. "But everybody's like, I watch movies, I can be a director. You've got to get on-set experience."
When financing fell through during Cabin Fever, he knew how to keep production moving: "We would give people their checks on Friday, raise money all weekend, and say don't cash till Monday."
Embrace Test Screenings as Learning Tools
Roth's biggest evolution has been learning to value test screenings. Once skeptical, he now sees them as essential diagnostic tools. "I would say to any filmmakers... if 300 people are all telling you the same thing, you might wanna listen and try and address it," he advises.
The key is reading the data strategically: "You go, I'm reading the data here because they want to like it. They're with you. You're just taking too long to get to the next kill, and they're getting ahead of the movie." With Thanksgiving, this led him to cut 15 minutes and refocus the film. "We made a slasher film, a detective story, and a high school comedy. I should just pick one. Make a slasher film."
The Real Challenge
What makes Roth's approach work is understanding that horror directing is ultimately about connection, not just shock value. Success comes from knowing how far to go, and when to pull back.
"Thank God we got our heads handed to us," Roth says of those early Thanksgiving test screenings. "What I do to those characters, the test audiences did to me. And I'm so happy they did because otherwise I would've gone out on 3000 screens and humiliated myself."
That might be the ultimate lesson: even experienced directors must sometimes surrender to audience wisdom, especially when your job is to entertain them.
The full conversation between Eli Roth and Kevin Goetz on "Don't Kill the Messenger" offers an even deeper dive into the filmmaker's creative process and experiences with horror cinema. For aspiring directors and horror enthusiasts, it's a masterclass in balancing artistic vision with audience expectations.