Troy worked with two artists, Keith Thompson and Chet Zar, and the three of them worked at Bleak House, the office I have in my home. I went at the beginning of the day and at the end of the day and one day it was there.

- Katie Holmes has taken a lot of flak in recent years for bringing too much celebrity baggage with her to really engage audiences. Did you have any doubts when casting her?

No, totally the opposite. I think that beyond the public celebrity, people should remember what a great actress she is. When you think about her start, when she was doing Go or Pieces Of April, she is such a solid actress.

And she’s so relatable, I find her incredibly likeable. The rest I frankly didn’t notice For us, the name was incredibly important, that it conjured somebody who was a solid actor. People talk about the special effects being the most important thing with these movies, but the most important thing is the actors because without them, the reality of the situation doesn’t matter.

We always wanted Katie, we always wanted Guy Pearce and when they responded it was the opposite - we felt blessed. A lot of actors consider a horror movie a B movie but, if done right, they are great vehicles for actors. Mia Farrow in Rosemary’s Baby, Nicole Kidman in The Others, you name it.

- Did you set out to avoid horror-movie cliches?

We made very conscious decisions to avoid certain things. Normally people refer to actresses in horror movies as scream queens but we made it a point that Katie’s character should essentially not be afraid. All the way until the end, she is completely fearless, whereas the most immature character in the movie is the male character played by Guy Pearce.

Bailee [Madison] is the smartest character in that she figures out everything early and says, 'I’m going.' Because always in these movies, you say, 'Why don’t they leave?' And she leaves - literally - although she’s 10 so they bring her back.

We also avoided big scenes where the characters sit down and explain each other. You know Bailee’s life with her mother from the two phone calls she makes: one where the mother doesn’t pick up and the other where the mother is more worried about the sashimi at a party than she is about her daughter. We don’t need to go, 'She was a bad mother.'

- Why do you like putting young girls at the heart of scary films?

If you see Devil’s Backbone, it’s the boys that are the central characters. But what I think is important is that I’m very intrigued by the relationship between fairytales and horror. As an artist, as a narrator, I’ve been fascinated by that link since I was a teenager.

I was saying how the Grimm’s Fairy Tales are so close to horror tales, and how you need a pure point of view to transit from one world to the next. In some fairytales or in early horror films, it was sort of princesses or the characters of Alice in Wonderland and Wizard Of Oz.

What I don’t do - as you can see from every movie I’ve produced or directed - is write female victim characters. I avoid it carefully, not only because I find it boring but also because I find it objectionable.

- There’s a rumour you’re involved in Disney’s Maleficent, which will tell the tale of the wicked villainess from Sleeping Beauty. Is that still happening?

No, I’m not. But I love the Disney female villains. I’m fascinated by them. But it’s always better to not have a weak character.

If you see the original Don’t Be Afraid Of The Dark, the character of Sally is a victim of everyone: her husband, the creatures whereas if you see the character of the girl in Pan’s Labyrinth, although she’s living under the captain, she’s not a victim. She stands up to him, she makes him angry, she doesn’t obey him.

- Hollywood’s very fond of remakes these days. Were their pitfalls to avoid?

Remakes are a) intrinsically not bad and b) not a modern phenomenon. I think they’re horrible when they come out of mercantilistic, economical calculation - a studio saying, 'We have a title, we’re going to relaunch it to make money. End of story' Who is the filmmaker? Doesn’t matter.

But Cronenberg remade The Fly, and made it better than the original, which was already good; John Carpenter’s The Thing is one of the greatest horror movies ever made. If the remake comes from a director, a writer, a producer having a genuine new take on an old piece of material, then there is not such a genuine concern. It’s important to come from a pure place with them.

- You were in Wellington, New Zealand developing The Hobbit while the film was shooting in Melbourne. Did you situate the shoot in Australia to have easy access?

That was the main driver. I was ultimately on the set of this movie for 85, 90% of the time and if we had shot it anywhere else, I couldn’t have been there.

This is a movie I’ve been pursuing for years, it’s a true labour of love and I wanted to be close. And Peter Jackson was super-nice about it. He gave me the greenlight to go whenever I wanted. It was very easy for me.

- The creatures sometimes resembled an army of mini-Gollums. Do you think that, unconsciously, a little bit of Peter Jackson’s influence was rubbing off on the film?

No. We actually were very inspired by rats, with the texture, the look and the way they skitter, the way their feet kind of slide on the floor. The movie became a real balancing act because the post-production travelled with me, to New Zealand, to LA, back to Melbourne, because I wanted to follow the whole process very closely.

- Can you explain why the creatures are so hungry for children’s teeth?

They feed on the bones and the teeth. They need calcium and if you notice, their bones are malnourished and twisted and sort of arthritic. So they crave this almost like a treat.

They don’t have to eat the bones, they just love to eat the bones and they are just greedy little bastards. I think it’s great to have the creatures be relentless in their attack. There is no redeeming quality to these little guys!

- You’re one of the busiest men in the film industry, and attached to so many different projects. How do you keep track of them all in your head?

A lot of them are not real or they never come to pass. They get announced before they are real deals so it’s not as many as you think. There was an article years ago that said, 'Guillermo’s busy until 2015.' I wish!

If every deal became a movie, I would have 20 movies under my belt. But the reality is that some of those projects, like Don’t Be Afraid Of The Dark, have been done for 13 years. That’s when the screenplay and the original deal were done. Or Pinocchio, which got announced two years ago but we’ve been at it for six years.

So it’s not as crazy as it sounds. It’s tough, I’ll admit - I have no free time. But I don’t like free time. For me, free time is horrible and my family knows it.

Don't Be Afraid of the Dark is out now. Take a look at some images from the film.

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