Alfonso Cuaron wants to make a horror movie inspired by films like 'Rosemary’s Baby' and 'The Babadook'.

The 62-year-old Mexican director includes sci-fi films 'Gravity' and 'Children of Men' as well as dramas 'Roma' and 'A Little Princess', but he is yet to turn his cameras to the horror genre.

Cuaron - who also helmed 'Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban' - insists it is his next ambition to create film that will fascinate and terrify audiences like those two horror classics.

Speaking at the Locarno Film Festival, in Switzerland, he said: "My aspiration is to one day do a horror film.

"I love 'Rosemary’s Baby', and the other Polanski films, and films like 'The Babadook'. They’re so grounded in reality and in character so I love those."

Cuaron has been trying to write a script for a "grounded" horror film, but he hasn't got his story quite right.

Talking at the event held at the Spazio Cinema, he added: "As a spectator, I have a wider taste but anything I feel I could do would need to be more grounded. I’ve been trying to write something like that, but somehow, it doesn’t fully work.”

'Rosemary’s Baby', directed by Roman Polanski, was released in 1968 and stars Mia Farrow as newlywed Rosemary Woodhouse who is living in the Bramford apartment building in New York City with her husband Guy Woodhouse (John Cassavetes) who becomes suspicious that her neighbours are members of a Satanic cult with evil plans for her unborn baby.

'The Babadook', written-and-directed by Jennifer Kent, was released in 2014 and focuses on a widowed single mother (Amelia Vanek) who, while struggling to cope with her grief, must confront a supernatural monster in her home with the help of her son.