“You think you know the story.”

This is the tagline to ‘The Cabin in the Woods’, a film directed by Drew Goddard (‘Cloverfield’) which he also co-wrote with Joss Whedon (‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’, ‘The Avengers’).

It stars Kristen Connolly (‘As the World Turns’), Jesse Williams (‘Grey’s Anatomy’) and Bradley Whitford (‘The West Wing’), as well as familiar Whedon collaborators Amy Acker (‘Angel’), Fran Kranz (‘Dollhouse’) and Tom Lenk (‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’). The film’s basic set-up is one you have seen one hundred times before in horror films: a group of attractive, mismatched young college students travel to a remote area, stay in a mysterious location, and soon realise that there is more to the cabin in the woods than meets the eye.

Here enters the tagline. “You think you know the story.”

Last year, Wes Craven attempted to reinvigorate the horror genre with ‘Scream 4′ in the same way that he did with the original ‘Scream’ in 1996. However, for all its strengths, ‘Scream 4′ was basically a re-tread of the same meta-textual style that Craven had already mastered in the franchise’s three previous installments.

Now, Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard? They have created a true gem of the genre with ‘The Cabin in the Woods’, a film which was filmed in 2009 and has sat on the shelf ever since distributor MGM filed for bankruptcy. Lionsgate eventually bought the film last year, and now its delayed big-screen life can begin.

Spoiler alert!

The first and most important strength of the film is its script. Goddard’s familiarity with Whedon’s voice – Goddard wrote 5 episodes of ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ and ‘Angel’ – results in an effortlessly snappy piece and several hilarious, not to mention ironic, interactions, primarily caused by Whitford’s and Kranz’s characters.

The script is never afraid to go for the comedy or the surreality of the situation, and it is this which allows the film to pull of its main conceit of being – SPOILER WARNING – about a ritual sacrifice for the ancient Gods, who are appeased through a ‘Big Brother’-type reality show where bets are made and outcomes are fixed as an array of undead creatures begin hunting down the five young college students to satiate the tempers of the Gods.

The script also thrives on its eagerness to play out every horror narrative cliché in the first half of the film, as Whedon and Goddard blow through gratuitous deaths and yawn-inducing twists, allowing the second half of the film to develop like a filmmaker’s playing ground.

Visually speaking, the second half of the film is when Godddard’s direction can be more fully appreciated, as it becomes more apparent that he assimilated the conventional look of a horror film early on so that he could subvert and deconstruct it piece by piece as each scene goes on. The chances he takes in the script are brought to life marvellously onscreen, while the final shot of the film is something which can only be appreciated in the context of everything that has gone before.

As for the cast, there are no issues. Whedon and Goddard have worked on enough ensemble projects to know how to cast well, and Whedon in particular is known for drawing from his own pool of actors from past projects and putting them into his new ones.

The pay-off here is a fantastic one, as Whedon fans (‘Whedonites’, for the uninitiated) get to see an underrated television performer like Amy Acker going toe-to-toe in scenes with Emmy-winner Bradley Whitford, and get to revel in ‘Dollhouse’-alum Fran Kranz facing off with – SPOILER WARNING - “The Sci-Fi Queen” Sigourney Weaver in the film’s captivating final minutes.

To say any more about the film is unnecessary. This is a delightfully fearless offering, and the most entertaining thing to happen to the horror genre in a very long time. Whedon has a busy year ahead of him, mainly with this summer’s blockbuster ‘The Avengers’, and ‘The Cabin in the Woods’ gets him off to a roaring start.

Image Courtesy of    The Cabin in the Woods

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In part two of the Cole Haddon interview, Cole goes into how he was able to put ‘The Strange Case of Mr. Hyde’ together, along with the many inspirations and influences he had when making the comic.

Toonari Post (TP): About your comic, ‘The Strange Case of Mr. Hyde’, your first issue was released in April 27 of 2011. Since then, you’ve released three other volumes, and now, in February, Dark Horse will be coming out with the four volume package. The one thing I was immediately impressed with was the artwork by M.S. Corley. How did you two come together for the project?

Cole Haddon (CH): M.S., I actually forgot what that stands for, but I know ‘M’ stands for Mike. At the time that the deal had been made and we were moving forward on ‘The Strange Case of Mr. Hyde’, my editor at the time, Dave Land, who has moved on from Dark Horse since then, sent me five or six really talented artists to consider, people who actually had name recognition. But a lot of it was, I don’t mean this as a slight, but it was the more conventional stuff.

There were a few that were a little out there, but for the most part, it was styles that I was familiar with. I knew from the start that I wanted ‘The Strange Case of Mr. Hyde’ to just look different, that when someone picked up the comic book to just immediately think that “this is something different, maybe I should pay attention to it.”

After going back and forth a little bit, they sent me Mike’s work, which I was immediately struck by because it didn’t look like other things that were out there. But he also didn’t have much of a history in comic books.

He had illustrated an eight-page story for Dark Horse Presents’ MySpace page. I believe that’s how it worked, which ironically enough involved Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Jack the Ripper, very odd, but a much more monstrous version of everything.

So it struck me as different and special, and we got on the phone and didn’t stop talking for like 90 minutes about how much we loved classic horror movies. Of course, that inspired ‘The Strange Case of Mr. Hyde’, and by the end, it just seemed clear Mike wanted to work on the research and figure out how to put on the page what I saw in my head.

I haven’t regretted the decision since. He’s done nothing, but amazing work and pushed himself every step of the way, even when there could have been easier ways of doing things. He consistently challenged the instincts that both of us had.

TP: At the point when Adye and Jekyll meet up with Newcomen in the Museum of Waxworks, that made me think of ‘The House of Wax’ with Vincent Price. What would you say your biggest influence for making this comic is?

CH: I think probably as an aesthetic storyteller, everything has come, for me, from film. Film has led me to every classic book I’ve ever read. It’s sort of the launching pad to my entire existence. Probably several years ago, upon seeing ‘Pulp Fiction’, it was the first time I realized that my natural instinct to mash things together, just because I thought it was cool, actually could work.

For instance, something that Tarantino has been doing ever since, is mashing together genres and films that have no business being in the same movie, but somehow works. I could only dream that I’m remotely effective as he is.

But that was really the launching point for combining a love of a lot of classic horror from Universal Pictures Monster movies of the ’30s, ’40s, and ’50s, which had a huge impact on this series, to the Hammer Horrors to the ’50s, ’60s, and early ’70s before they went off the rails.

That had a huge impact. In fact, there is a Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee cameo in the series if you look very carefully. It was always the intention to draw inspiration to from the films that had such an impact on me as a child, to somehow reintroduce that feeling, that love of Gothic horror to a reader who might not be all that familiar with it.

The colorist, Jim Campbell, did some remarkable work, I think. He was probably chiefly responsible for invoking the feel of those Hammer films, in particular with the color pallet he chose. Contrast, saturated, and de-saturated colors between the upper-class and the lower-class to thematic colors for characters, the use of the brightest, most garish red we could come up with for blood that is never diluted by shadows or distance.

Blood, just like in all of the Hammer films, just has to scream at the audience. Even the ‘House of Wax’ reference is correct. Madame Tussauds is a real location.

Because the film goes hand-in-hand with the comic book, it was important that there were set pieces, major set pieces that people would recognize and would be exciting to see on the screen, and Madame Tussauds was one of those just for what it offered in terms of action, in terms of being able to actually have a visual representation of what the popular idea of what Hyde is.

There is also the fact that I love the Vincent Price ‘House of Wax’ and go all the way back to the Michael Curtiz’s ‘Mystery of the Wax Museum’, which is an old, two-color inspiration for the ‘House of Wax’.

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Recently, Toonari Post spoke with Cole Haddon, author of ‘The Strange Case of Mr. Hyde’. The comic, by Dark Horse, was a successful four volume series which has recently breached Hollywood and will become a full-length motion picture. Cole Haddon explained to us how he got his start and how he came up with the story behind ‘The Strange Case of Mr. Hyde’.

Toonari Post (TP): How did you start your current career?

Cole Haddon (CH): I moved out here to L. A. six years ago with the intention of breaking into the film business as a screenwriter. That took about three years with the help of friends I made, because I got representation and got some attention on some scripts I was working on. That led to reaching the comic book world to a meeting with Dark Horse Entertainment, and that’s how I became a comic book writer. But, for the screenplay stuff, that was just hard work and people eventually liking what I was doing, and it paid off.

TP: How long have you been focused on screenwriting, and then evolved to comics?

CH: As long as I can remember, I’ve always wanted to be a storyteller. I think I’ve just gone with that title as an umbrella for what I wanted to do, because I drifted between so many different mediums. When I was 13, I thought I was going to be a comic book writer, and I was also an illustrator.

So I was trying to break into the business just as the image boom was exploding around the country. But it took me forever to draw a comic book. Where other people do it quite naturally, I would have been spending two years to do two issues. But I enjoyed the stories so much and transitioned into screenwriting, and then went off to college where I then again transitioned into writing novels and short stories.

Until about 28 or so, I just realized film was where my heart had always been, and I was just running in circles around it, because I think in Michigan, where I’m from, you’re largely told that’s a dream for other people, that you should just go get a job at General Motor or if you get your degree and become an engineer, or a lawyer, or doctor, or something simple and easy and clearly lucrative.

So I ran from diving in for a long time, and I just gave up on running and got in the car and drove out here, and I’ve been here ever since. Very long and winding, and not at all a direct path, but I always knew that I wanted to be telling stories, and that, so far, looks like what I have to do.

TP: When you went into making the comic, was there anything specific you wanted to introduce into the comic world? What did you feel was missing and that you wanted to add in the comic book industry?

CH: I’ve been a comic book fan since I was probably eight and worked at comic book stores, and like I said, I thought I was going to work in the comic book industry from a very young age. That was mostly from the love of super hero comic books, and as I got older, though, I found I wanted more and more sophisticated stories, which weren’t always to be found in the super hero series.

So, I think when I finally got the opportunity to move into the medium, thanks to Dark Horse, I really wanted to use it as a means to explore themes that I wasn’t really allowed to touch in my screenwriting career.

In many ways, I call comic books my independent film because it pays like shit, but the satisfaction is through the roof. I control everything, and you get to create your own property, such as ‘The Strange Case of Mr. Hyde’.

So having that freedom to explore ideas, sometimes challenging ideas about society and religion and politics and many of these things that I found in the medium that I wanted to play with, and I didn’t necessarily see enough. There is much of it out there, but it’s stuff I had to look for. So when I finally got into it, I wanted to, at least, focus on that myself.

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For someone like myself, who thoroughly enjoys horror flicks, I have high expectations for such movies. I am usually afraid to spend my money, however, on scary movies in theaters. This is not because I find them too frightening, but because I almost always end up laughing more than screaming.

Hollywood horror flicks can tend to feature more nudity, sex and laughable attempts at scares then horror. Typically I prefer old-school horror films, with more chills than gore. Also, something with an interesting storyline that keeps you guessing as the movie goes on. Luckily, ‘The Woman in Black’ was just that.

*WARNING: Spoilers*

The film features a young father whose wife has recently passed away. Holding onto his job by a thread he must venture out to a small English village and sort through the legal paperwork of a recently passed away resident. From there a series of connected events begin to unfold, and a mystery about the town is revealed.

It stars Daniel Radcliffe in his first film since the Harry Potter series. I must admit at first it was slightly odd seeing him in such a different role; during the beginning I kept expecting to see a glimpse of his scar behind his shaggy head of hair. However, he does a good job of convincing you of his character, and after the first 5 minutes I was able to forget about Harry.

The other actors played their parts well, and I didn’t find anything to be too over the top or cheesy. Interestingly enough, IMDB states that Radcliffe actually casted his godson in the role of his son, so that the two would have more of an emotional connection on screen.

The way they shot the film also added to the character of the movie, and they used a more washed-out coloring when filming, steering clear of bright colors. It also features a large array of toy props, these are used to add to the creepy element, and IMDB also mentions that they were borrowed from a collector and are indeed original 19th century toys for children. These just make it clear that the film makers went to some lengths in order to produce a realistic setting, and visually intriguing film.

Yes, the movie does contain some typical ‘ghost story’ elements, and it has received bad reviews for that. However, they are placed at points in the movie in a way that keeps you guessing and intrigued in the developing plotline. Overall, ‘The Woman in Black’ was well worth the cost of the theater, and came with plenty of scares. I highly recommend this to anyone who enjoys horror movies.

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