‘Woods’ Writers Look To Shake Up The Horror Genre

Think you’ve seen every horror movie there is? Think you know the genre inside and out—you know who is going to say what, and from the first minute in, you can predict who will die and who will survive? Think again.

As the teaser poster for the new horror film The Cabin in the Woods boasts, “You think you know the story.”

The film The Cabin in the Woods is not your typical horror movie—in fact, writers Joss Whedon (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Dollhouse, The Avengers) and Drew Goddard (Cloverfield, Lost) are both so familiar with the genre that they sought to shake it up – perhaps they were even poking fun at some of the cliches of these movies.

As part of the film’s press tour, stars Kristen Connolly (Dana) and Fran Kranz (Marty) stopped by Boston’s historic Liberty Hotel on Monday, Mar. 26, for interviews with the media. The Heights had the opportunity to be a part of a 30-minute question and answer session with the two young actors.

The film takes the plot right out of a 1981 horror, The Evil Dead —so much so that director Goddard even had the cast watch the movie in order to prepare. Kranz said that among the movies he watched were The Descent, Halloween, and, oddly enough, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Goddard wanted Kranz and Connolly to hone in on the warm, touching moments from Sundance Kid for their last scene together. Kranz recalls, “Drew was so in love with that last scene, he didn’t want to move on.” Kranz liked the idea of watching cabin-related movies in order to get into “the mind set” to go out and film and create “a place in the history of horror.” He goes on to say that “Cabin is a horror film unlike any other. I think it’s raising the bar. It’s a hybrid genre that transcends the genre … hopefully it sets a new standard to horror.”

What is great about this movie is that it is both like a typical horror movie, and at the same time it is so unlike one. Whedon and Goddard are well experienced in the genre, so they know all the cliche moments. Cabin still has plenty of cliches—somehow that is unavoidable—but you get the feeling that they are mocking the typical conventions. For Goddard, it was all about “playing with the stereotypes … changing the conventions of horror,” Kranz said.

The most obvious set of conventions was the personalities of the five main characters. There’s the jock (Chris Hemsworth), the promiscuous girlfriend (Anna Hutchison), the smart, virginal best friend (Connolly), the other athlete friend who is a “nice-guy” (Jesse Williams) and, of course, the pot-head (Kranz).

But­­—here comes a twist—the jock is actually really smart, “on a full academic scholarship,” the skank is also smart and not so promiscuous, the good girl is not-so-good (she had an affair with a professor), the pot-head is very wise (playing off the Shakespearean fool), and the nice guy is, well, a really nice guy. Both Kranz and Connolly agreed that even though their characters have been seen many times over, they are “more three dimensional that the stock characters.”The characters only begin to change into their cliched alter egos after they arrive at the cabin—because, clearly, this is no ordinary cabin in the woods.

Something that most people don’t know about The Cabin in the Woods is that it wrapped filming over three years ago, in June 2009. Connolly and Kranz don’t know much about why a movie that took two days to write, and only a few months of shoot, took years to be released. It was “really frustrating,” Connolly said. “Everyone loved the movie so much, and you can’t talk about it! You just keep thinking, like ‘when is this thing coming out?’”

Part of the reason for the extended post-production phase was because there were talks of turning the movie into 3D. Most of the film is still action or practical effects, so for Connolly it would have seemed “silly” if they had gone in that direction. No matter how long it took to reach theaters, “It was so worth the wait,” Connolly. “We did a great job making it,” Kranz said with excitement. “It’s really sweet now that it’s out,” and overall, in his words, the film is just “awesome.”

“I think the movie ended up with the right people [Lionsgate] at the right time … the movie is where it belongs,” said Kranz. The Cabin in the Woods is a tasteful take on an overdone genre—or, like Fran Kranz puts it, “it’s action, it’s science fiction, it’s comedy—it’s everything you could ask for in a fun, crazy entertaining movie, and then some.”