It took only three days for Joss Whedon and Cloverfield scribe Drew Goddard to write The Cabin in the Woods. And then, thanks to studio troubles, it took nearly three years for the rip-roaring horror film to hit theaters.
If you ask Goddard, who also directed the film, the long wait might have been a blessing in disguise.
“There’s a real sense of fate that’s happened with this movie.” Shot in 2009 with a then-little-known lead named Chris Hemsworth, Cabin got put on ice when its studio, MGM, filed for bankruptcy. Lionsgate picked up the outrageous horror flick last year, and in the time since it was filmed, Hemsworth has become a big deal (ahem, Thor) and his co-star Jesse Williams has become a Grey’s Anatomy Hottie McSomething.
“This may have been the best thing that could’ve happened to us,” Goddard said in an interview with Wired, talking about the lucky series of events. “We’re now at a studio that just loves us and is so supportive, and our actors have gone on to become stars. There’s a real sense of fate that’s happened with this movie.”
Goddard doesn’t say it, but it also might be something of a twist of fate that his directorial debut — out Friday — is being released just three weeks before Whedon’s superhero team-up flick The Avengers. All eyes are on Whedon now, and some of the nerd spotlight shining on The Avengers (which also stars Hemsworth) will likely splash over onto the dark and funny Cabin in the Woods.
Holden (played by Jesse Williams) and Dana (Kristen Connolly) face unspeakable evil in The Cabin in the Woods.
Photo: Diyah Pera
The R-rated film could seriously use the geek cred of creators Whedon and Goddard, whose relationship goes all the way back to 2002, when Goddard came on as a writer for the Buffy the Vampire Slayer television series. That’s not because Cabin in the Woods is not a good film — it definitely is — but because it’s a movie that’s hard to explain. And even if its awesomeness could be put into words, doing so would spoil the fun. That means audiences may have to go into theaters trusting that Whedon and Goddard won’t let them down.
Not that Whedon is hoping to cash in on his name to get people into multiplexes.
“I have a strong and passionate and intelligent fan base,” Whedon told Wired during the South by Southwest Film festival this year, where Cabin premiered. “But it’s very easy to go on the internet and convince yourself that the entire world is talking about you and then see box office returns and go, ‘It was just those five guys!’ I think that there are almost as many people who would stay away from something because of me as there are who will see it.”
Perhaps any empty seats will be filled by horror-seekers looking for a good, Evil Dead-esque gorefest (in an homage to that style, Cabin harbors what Goddard has dubbed the “Angry Molesting Tree”). Horror fans will get what they’re looking for, but they’ll also get a send-up of every oh-god-don’t-go-down-there! scary movie that has come before.
“We love horror films, and Joss and I just said, ‘Look, if we could make any horror film, what would we do?'” “We love horror films,” Goddard said, “and Joss and I just said, ‘Look, if we could make any horror film, what would we do?’ So this is us packing in as much fun as we possibly could into one horror movie. That was the goal with Cabin in the Woods.”
How they went about achieving that goal was equal parts peculiar and awesome. The scriptwriting duo sequestered themselves in a hotel (in separate rooms) and cranked out one act per day. They ran into very few disagreements — probably thanks to what Whedon calls their “shared-brain thing” — and didn’t do much rewriting.
After their script was ready, they picked their dream team of a cast and, according to Goddard, got everyone they wanted. However, in order to keep Cabin in the Woods’ mysterious plot under wraps, auditions were done with dialog that wasn’t in the actual script, according to Williams, who plays brainy Holden, one of the film’s five friends who set out on a seriously eventful camping trip.
“Our auditions were fake,” Williams said. “The style was similar, it was just that the scenarios were different — it was like me and a girl in an Angry Molesting Hot Tub, as opposed to Angry Molesting Tree.”
Aside from Williams and Hemsworth, Cabin stars Anna Hutchison, Richard Jenkins, Bradley Whitford and scores of other great players (including one fantastic cameo that won’t be disclosed here). They finished their film, and then it got side-tracked in a way that actually might have drummed up anticipation, rather than leading theater-goers to forget about its existence.
Regardless, Goddard doesn’t want his feature debut to simply attract Buffy junkies looking for another fix. He’d rather Cabin in the Woods be his and Whedon’s love letter to the genre they adore.
“You feel the responsibility of proving it,” he said of maintaining his and Whedon’s status as nerd auteurs. “You always want to say every time, ‘We really are bringing it for you.'”
