I’ve been re-reading Gilbert Adair’s brilliant book, Flickers, which was published around the centenary of the art form we all love and admire. The premise of the book is centred around film stills, a film title and what they tell us about the medium … what can be decoded and sometimes what they fail to convey. Adair’s rapier wit and cutting critiques should be applied to the sort of production stills we get deluged with in the run up to a film’s production. It’d be fun, at the very least.
Take this latest one from The Cabin in the Woods. Sometimes a film still can be interesting by what it doesn’t tell us. What exactly are they looking at, these characters in this image?
The girl looks apprehensive, the guy illuminates, with a lamp, something we cannot see. Pretty much every still image released by Lionsgate for this picture has used the same sort of framing and device: we cannot see yet we are looking. The jock in the high school jacket could be reading something … puzzled by an image. We don’t know. The marketing machine for The Cabin in the Woods is designed to kill the fans with anticipation and mystery.
The mighty Joss Whedon co-wrote the film with former Buffy, Angel and Cloverfield writer, Drew Goddard, who makes his directorial debut. The flick was delayed by MGM’s money worries then Lionsgate snapped it up for distribution. April is officially Joss Whedon month. Got that?
It gets better: Peter Deming lensed the flick too. He shot another famous cabin in the woods horror show called Evil Dead II: Dead By Dawn. That’s some meta shit!
Starring is Chris Hemsworth, Kristen Connolly, Anna Hutchinson, Fran Kanz, Jesse Williams, Bradley Whitford, and Richard Jenkins.
US Release Date: 13 April, 2012
UK Release Date: 13 April, 2012
Source: Collider
