Joss Whedon On The Rights and Wrongs of Horror Movies

Joss Whedon’s Cabin in the Woods premiered at SXSW to almost universal acclaim and will be out in cinemas everywhere not to long from now (in the US and UK, it’s April 13, wer’e assuming around the same time in Australia).

If you’re not a fan of Buffy, or Angel, or Firefly, or Doll House, then this year may be looking pretty dark as Whedon releases two films – ‘The Cabin In The Woods’ which he co-wrote with Drew Goddard, (writer of Cloverfield and veteran of Alias, Lost, Angel and Buffy, makes his directorial debut) and The Avengers, which he wrote and directed.

The Cabin In The Woods has been delayed in release due to a post 3D conversion process, and then due to financial difficulties for parent company MGM. The film was going to be released in 2009, 2010, Halloween 2011 and now, after being bought by Lionsgate, it comes to cinemas in 2012.

Usually a film is delayed release due to it being rubbish, but in this case… that might not be the case, especially if the raves from SXSW are to be trusted.

So, if you are a fan of Josh Whedon, it’s Muppet-arm ‘yaaaay’ time.

Whedon recently spoke with Total Film about his approach to making the film, and not surprisingly, he has some insightful things to say on the subject of making horror movies and ‘The Cabin In The Woods’.

“It’s basically a very loving hate letter. 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.

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.

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.”

So there you have it. Pretty straightforward stuff from someone who knows what they’re doing.

‘The Cabin in the Woods’ stars Richard Jenkins, Bradley Whitford, Chris Hemsworth and Amy Acker.

Joss Whedon only won his first Emmy for ‘Doctor Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog’