For those of the techie variety, winter quarter was a time of scheduled interviews, job selections and contract signing. In the cold of winter, computer science majors and engineers across Stanford took refuge in the certainty of their summer plans. But for fuzzies, especially those pursuing careers in entertainment, April is the cruelest month. While many of us await emails or still manage to schedule phone and Skype interviews, the possibility of an unpaid summer internship reading (and rejecting) scripts is but the light at the end of a tunnel leading to yet more unsteady jobs and precarious life plans. And this is the gravest of many students’ problems. In the thawing of winter and the rush of spring quarter, it’s easy to forget how easy we have it at Stanford, but Drew Goddard’s “The Cabin in the Woods” kindly reminds college students everywhere of their triviality in the world as well as their capacity to seriously mess it up.
Goddard, known for his writing work on “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and “Cloverfield,” teams up with Joss Whedon (“Buffy,” “Toy Story”) and J.J. Abrams (“Lost,” “Super 8”) again—this time for his directorial debut. In the practically titled film, five friends find themselves alone in—you guessed it!—a cabin in the woods, prepared to enjoy a weekend of daring, debauchery and experimentation. From its premise to its trailer, the film has all the trimmings of a standard horror movie.
“I would be shocked if “Cabin” is anything like those movies. Anything like any movie, ” Goddard said with an audible pause surrounding his shock when I asked if “Cabin” will join the ranks of typical thrillers like “Silent House” and “House at the End of the Street,” both released this year.
“When I wrote ‘Cabin’ my hope was for in the future, down the line people to be saying, ‘Well, is this like “Cabin?”’ not ‘What is “Cabin” like?’” he said.
And he’s right. “The Cabin in the Woods” defies expectation as much as Goddard defied mine. When I met the 37-year-old director in the parlor of a Ritz-Carlton hotel room, he appeared nothing like the Drew Goddard I had studied from photos and press interviews. Dressed in all black with the facial hair to suggest a pretty good Halloween attempt to render Wolverine, Goddard had the poise and impatience that speak to his experience with these sorts of interviews.
“It’s an homage to the horror movie really. It comes out of the love for all horror movies,” he said. “It’s not really one movie; it’s about my love for the genre.”
The film may pay homage, but it certainly turns the genre on its head. Five friends in the woods is where all conventionality ends, and any viewer who thinks she knows what’s coming will be in store for a rule-breaking story. As many fuzzies can attest, or perhaps even a Stanford student stuck in the right PWR might have heard, “Buffy” has received record amounts of critical and academic coverage for its seminal status as genre-setting. In the same way, “Cabin” shrugs off its ostensibly similar counterparts and fits more aptly in the horror-comedy genre with the likes of “Jennifer’s Body,” “Dead Snow” and “Zombieland.”
And where those films excelled in tight dialogue and a surging craze, “Cabin” shines with surprise and clever crafting, answering an age-old question: “Where do horror movies come from?” If the meta-plot does not sate the keenest of intellectual viewers, perhaps the Friday the 13th premier date can at least assuage those with a sense of humor.