The Cabin in the Woods

Cabin in the Woods is the Joss Whedon project that we currently know the least about. Originally set for release in February of 2010, MGM Studios pulled the movie back in the wake of Avatar‘s massive success in order to do a 3D makeover. The new date was scheduled for January 14, 2011. Over the course of 2010, though, MGM ran into major cash flow problems. The studio basically went bankrupt and remained up for sale for months without a buyer. Their entire slate of upcoming movies was put on indefinite hold, including the James Bond franchise. Now that MGM has finally been refinanced, things are starting to get back on track for the studio.

This has yet to result in a re-revised release date for Cabin in the Woods, however. Although 2010 was huge for Avatar, the glut of 3-D movies in the marketplace showed that just slapping the words “3-D” on a film wasn’t a guarantee of success. On top of that, so-called “post-conversion” 3-D movies generated a huge amount of negative word of mouth and bad publicity. Movies like Clash of the Titans and The Last Airbender made money, but they weren’t shot in 3-D, and the after-the-fact addition of the technology became more unpopular as the year went on. It’s not known at this time if Cabin in the Woods is going to come out in the standard two dimensions in which it was originally conceived or if the reorganized MGM is going to stick with the plan to go with 3-D.

Whedon is credited as a producer and co-writer on the project. His longtime collaborator Drew Goddard is the director and co-writer of the film. Goddard got his start in the Whedonverse in Season Seven of Buffy, and wrote or co-wrote some of that lackluster season’s most lively episodes, including “Conversations with Dead People” and “Dirty Girls.” After Buffy concluded Goddard went on to several other genre shows, scripting excellent episodes in Season Five of Angel as well as jumping over to the J. J. Abrams camp to work on Alias and eventually Lost. Goddard also wrote the screenplay for Cloverfield, infusing that movie with more wit than the standard horror film.

Very little is known about the plot of Cabin in the Woods. Goddard and Whedon have talked about wanting to subvert well-known horror tropes, and that the title is a reference to a type of scary movie that’s nearly its own subgenre. Generally a group of teenagers or young college students head to a remote forest, either to go camping or to stay at a cabin that only one of them knows about. Then bad things happen to them; usually, but not always, due to monsters. Movies like The Evil Dead made this type of idea famous, and it was resurrected in the last decade in horror films as diverse as Cabin Fever (flesh-eating virus) and Dead Snow (zombie Nazis). Frequent Whedon actor Alan Tudyk (Firefly, Dollhouse) even starred in a parody of the subgenre, the hilarious Tucker and Dale vs. Evil, which, sadly, has yet to see a North American release outside of film festival screenings.

The cast of Cabin in the Woods features no major stars, although that comes with a caveat. Chris Hemsworth has a major role in the movie, and he also stars in Marvel’s Thor, coming this summer. If Thor becomes the breakout hit Marvel expects it to be, MGM will have a built-in hook to create its marketing campaign around. Other than Hemsworth, though, the cast is made up of TV veterans and “hey, it’s that guy from that other thing” character actors. Amy Acker and Fran Kranz were both on Dollhouse, while Jesse Williams is in Grey’s Anatomy. Richard Jenkins and Bradley Whitford, whom the official plot description lists as being “white collar co-workers with a mysterious connection to the cabin,” have both been in a whole bunch of stuff. Whitford was most famously a regular on The West Wing, while Jenkins was receive a 2008 Academy Award Best Actor nomination for The Visitor a day after being announced for Cabin and has recently had supporting appearances in films including Step Brothers, Burn After Reading, and Let Me In.

Based on the work that Whedon and Goddard have done in the past, there is almost no chance of the movie being a completely straight-faced, serious horror flick. The three promotional posters released by MGM during Comic-Con 2009 seem to confirm this. When the movie finally does hit theaters, it’s a good bet that it will contain laughs as well as scares. Based on the >track record of movies in the horror-comedy genre, it’s also a good bet that the film will be ignored by general audiences. Cabin in the Woods comes almost pre-destined to join the library of Joss Whedon’s “cult” movies and TV shows. But Whedon fans know as well as anybody that commercial success is not an indicator of actual quality level. What we do know of this film makes it sound like something significantly different than what Whedon has tried before, and it’s piqued our curiosity.