Director says 'Cabin in the Woods' will surprise audiences

Talking to Drew Goddard, the director and co-writer of the new horror movie "The Cabin in the Woods," is a little like talking to a very smart fanboy on a caffeine buzz.

"The last half-hour of our movie goes particularly insane!" Goddard told me. "We do things that have never been done before on screen, and that's a very satisfying thing. It's always my goal to give the audience something new, something they haven't seen before. And I feel confident that we did that with this movie."

Fair enough.

"Cabin in the Woods" opens Friday after being stuck in legal limbo for two years following MGM's bankruptcy. The movie is Goddard's directorial debut after years of writing scripts for TV's "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," producing "Lost" and writing the screenplay to the "found-footage" thriller "Cloverfield."

"This was my first film to direct, and there's just something hard when 300 people are looking at you and you realize you have no one else to turn to," Goddard said. "It took a week or two to find my sea legs. Being a writer is such a solitary endeavor. The extroverted nature of being a director took a little getting use to."

"Cabin in the Woods" turns our expectations upside down, so the usual partygoers aren't stupid teens, but young intellectuals who read philosophy and economics.

"That was us addressing part of our frustration with not just horror films, but all cinema, in terms of dumbing down and compartmentalizing young people in their teens and early 20s," Goddard said.

"We wanted to explore why we do that - what is it about not just movies, but our culture in general that feels the need to marginalize youth, make them into just one thing, and then dismiss them?"

But, I asked, having high IQs didn't particularly help the characters, did it?

"I hadn't really thought about that," Goddard said, "but you're not wrong. But isn't that sort of what life is? You think by getting smarter things will be fine, but you deal with the same things everyone else has to deal with?"

So what is it about horror movies that fascinates us?

"Horror films allow us to get in touch with the darker aspects of who we are in the relative safety of a theater," Goddard said. "There's this communal celebration of darkness that happens. There's nothing like it.

"That visceral feeling of everyone screaming together and everyone laughing together. Having fun with the knowledge that nothing bad is going to happen to you. It must release some primal tension."

But doesn't watching horror movies on your TV at home negate everything you just said?

"I love watching horror movies at home, too," Goddard said. "So, maybe I'm wrong."

For the time being, Goddard said he just wants to keep working and trying not to repeat himself.

Good luck in a corporate culture where imitation is the sincerest form of risk reduction.

"I'm getting tired of our culture where everything feels like a setup for a franchise, and filmmakers are holding back their best stuff for the next one," he said. "I said, 'Let's put everything we can into this one.' We just wanted to make one great movie."

Clearly, the producers of "John Carter" didn't agree with you, I said.

"Ninety percent of Hollywood didn't agree with me on this one," Goddard said.