Joss Whedon

Total Film caught up with Joss Whedon recently to talk about The Cabin In The Woods, the genre-hacking, invention-spewing horror that he produced and co-wrote.

Keen to get some insight into the thinking behind it, we asked Whedon about the inspiration behind Cabin.

“It’s basically a very loving hate letter,” he told us.

“On some level it was completely a lark, me and Drew [Goddard, director] trying to figure out what the most fun we could have would be. On another level it’s a serious critique of what we love and what we don’t about horror movies.”

On his own genre passion, he added, “I love being scared. I love that mixture of thrill, of horror, that objectification/identification thing of wanting definitely for the people to be alright but at the same time hoping they’ll go somewhere dark and face something awful.”

And on the things he hates about lame horror, Whedon said: “The things that I don’t like are kids acting like idiots, the devolution of the horror movie into torture porn and into a long series of sadistic comeuppances. Drew and I both felt that the pendulum had sung a little too far in that direction.”

The Cabin In The Woods opens on 13 April 2012.