‘The Cabin in the Woods’ packs shockers that slash horror movie conventions

TORONTO – It’s almost impossible to conduct an interview with writer-director Drew Goddard about his horror-comedy “The Cabin in the Woods” without straying into territory he’d rather avoid.

“It’s just so much better the less you know,” Goddard said as he danced around the chiller’s twists and turns during a recent promotional stop in Toronto.

And there’s a lot Goddard doesn’t want you to know about this movie.

He’ll allow that “The Cabin in the Woods” boasts a deceptively simple premise and is not your typical slasher film. But too much more information would kill the experience, he says.

“We’re not trying to be cagey,” Goddard insists while nevertheless skirting talk that might hint at major spoilers.

“We’re just trying to protect the experience because so much of ‘Cabin’ is about the experience that happens when you’re in the audience with all of these people feeling the screams and the cheers and the laughs and feeling the ride.”

The movie trailer reveals at least two big surprises, a necessary evil Goddard says was permitted to hint at larger bombshells that aren’t revealed.

However, the official tagline is simple: five college pals head to an isolated country cabin for a weekend of debauchery. Bloodshed ensues.

“We love that premise, it always works,” Goddard says of the well-worn trope.

“Whenever I see it happen in a movie I’m like ‘Oh, good.’ I’m excited because you know it’s going to go bad and you know it’s going to be fun to watch. But we wanted to put our spin on it, we wanted to do something a little different and change it up a little bit.”

The film was shot in and around Vancouver in 2009, but studio troubles kept it from release until now.

Goddard, who co-wrote the script with “Buffy the Vampire” writer-creator Joss Whedon, says great lengths were taken to ensure that the really big shocks stayed under wraps.

The script was kept under tight control and filmmakers even wrote fake lines for the auditions, Whedon reveals in production notes for the film.

Each of the main characters were sent battling a different supernatural beast, just in case tidbits leaked online.

“In Curt’s case, it was a pterodactyl movie,” says Whedon, referring to a hunky jock character played by Chris Hemsworth.

“In Holden and Jules’ scene, (it was) about tentacles in a Jacuzzi; Marty had a monologue about something made entirely of claws. So basically, it was: take the exact character that you’re looking for and then put him or her in a different movie.”

In keeping with the film’s tongue-in-cheek nod to horror conventions, the young and attractive party animals appear to be stock movie-monster bait: in addition to Curt there’s the bookworm Holden, played by Jesse Williams; the sexy Jules, portrayed by Anna Hutchison; the comical stoner Marty, played by Fran Kranz; and the virginal heroine Dana, played by Kristen Connolly.

Tucked among the cast are familiar faces from past Whedon productions, including Franz from “Dollhouse,” Tom Lenk from “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and Amy Acker from “Angel” and “Dollhouse.”

Goddard’s longtime partnership with the prolific Whedon, who hits big screens next month with super-hero tentpole “The Avengers,” began when Goddard was hired as a writer on “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.”

Goddard went on to write for Whedon’s “Buffy” spinoff “Angel,” as well as produce and write for “Alias” and “Lost.” He jumped to the big screen in 2008 with his script for the found-footage monster thriller “Cloverfield,” produced by “Lost” mastermind J.J. Abrams.

Goddard credits Whedon with inspiring a fierce loyalty among past cast and crew that keeps them coming back to each other, even when various careers diverge.

“It all starts with Joss. I think so much of us believe in him and believe in what it is he’s doing and his sort of vision of the world,” gushes Goddard, who says the two began hashing out ideas for “The Cabin in the Woods” in 2007.

“We kept trying to find ways to work together and once we do that then we’d talk about the cast that we love and we try to keep them working as well. It’s a real family that he creates and we just want to keep that family going as long as possible.”

Their main goal with “Cabin” was to celebrate what they love about horror films, Goddard adds, nevertheless dismissing recent gorefests that seem intent on upping the shock factor.

“We just sort of set out to write the ultimate horror movie, that was our goal,” says Goddard.

“There is a movement in the last few years towards this sort of fetish-ization of the violence — you see a lot of beautifully lit sawing through flesh and things like that that sort of made our skin crawl.”

Still, gore does have its place, adds Goddard.

The blood flows freely in “Cabin,” which Goddard says he carefully plotted — right down to the spatter patterns.

“Scientists at MIT have not worked as hard as I worked on watching blood spatter patterns in this movie,” he jokes.

But sheer volume was the real goal, he adds.

“I wanted to beat (director Stanley) Kubrick’s record for ‘The Shining’ because he had some ungodly amount of blood for his elevator sequence,” he says.

“I wanted to top that. I don’t think we did because Kubrick, God bless him, he does everything the best, he even beat us in the blood. (But) we definitely put a lot of blood in this movie.”

And if there are flourishes that remind horror fans of other fright classics like Sam Raimi’s “The Evil Dead” or Dario Argento’s “Suspiria,” it’s all done with sincere affection, Goddard says.

Even the film’s comical jabs at oft-seen horror gimmicks are rooted in a longtime love for what makes audiences jump in the dark, he says.

“Certainly there are some that we sort of tip our hat to in this movie,” he says of tropes that are parodied. “These things are conventions for a reason — they’re conventions because they work.

“The problem is people get lazy. I guess I just get tired when it seems lazy. But if there’s thought to it, if there’s a twist on it, a spin on it, I’m the first one cheering.”

“The Cabin in the Woods” opens Friday.