Have you ever wondered what would Alfred Hitchcock do in the age of CGI and VFX? What kind of strange insane shorts he would come up with? Well Robert Zemeckis set out for himself a challenge to find out. He is notorious for using visual effects creatively. A lot of people might be familiar with the mirror shot he did in the film Contact. So something like trying to make a Hitchcockian thriller of the 21st century was just about the right kind of thing for Zemeckis.
I think I can draw a parallel here with Alfred Hitchcock and the birth of the MPAA rating system. His most memorable and greatest films were made before the R rating was a thing. When every movie should have been PG. Psycho for example was famous with avoiding real violence and nudity on screen while depicting a murder with a knife of a woman taking a shower. After the R rating was established, Hitchcock could finally not censor himself, and therefor the films become not as interesting. I'm not saying that we should have censorship or anything. I even think that MPAA is stupidly restrictive. And there should not be an age based rating. But more like a severity based rating instead. But still making a kosher movie that is intense is an art in and of itself.
But what about simple things? Suspense, for example was made popular by Alfred Hitchcock. Having "cock" in your name is probably profound. I could not even imagine how much terror and suspense there might be with a cock that is hitchhiking. Maybe because of these fact he could have figured out suspense on his own. But he didn't invent it. He, as everybody else, learned it from somebody else.