Paranormal Activity series writer jokes about how writing follow-ups to the hit found-footage horror “was a thankless task” because of the illusion that the movies are real: “‘Oh, it’s so easy! You improvise!'”

Christopher Landon says people thought the Paranormal Activity movies were mostly improvised, rather than written – proving them to be a little too effective.

“I always told people that writing those movies was a thankless task because the whole point of them was to sort of create the illusion that they were real,” says in the new issue of SFX magazine, which features Black Mirror season 7 on the cover and hits newsstands on Wednesday, March 26.