In an interview with /Film’s Ryan Scott, Giacchino enthused that his go-for-broke desire for gore was enabled by the studio:
“[I]t became a joke on set while we were shooting, which was like, when they would ask me, ‘What do you think, Michael? What do you think?’ And they would stop me and they’d go, ‘Let me guess. More blood.’ I’d be like, ‘Yes, more blood.’ Or, ‘Can we amputate this thing?’ Or, ‘Can we do that?’ And they would be like, ‘Oh God, oh God, what are we making here?'”
While the classic EC comics reveled in gore, Giacchino wanted his bloodletting to be a necessary part of the story. His comments sound like those of a man who’s watched John Landis’s “An American Werewolf in London” more than a few times.
“We weren’t making a sadistic movie, we weren’t doing a slasher film where people are just indiscriminately killed for no reason at all. There’s heart to this, there’s empathy in this, and there’s adventure, there’s humor. I think, when you balance all those things out, you can get away with a lot more than you would if you just went straight on slasher.”