By David Dent
If you thought that the SCREAM franchise or Drew Goddard’s 2011 movie CABIN IN THE WOODS were rather meta, well hang on to your hatpins for this one.
A group of generic youngsters head out for a getaway at a cabin in the woods: Ani (Putri Anggie), whose relatives own the house, Budi (Haydar Salishz), Iwan (Abhin Abdul Hakim), Wati (Anastasia Herzigova) and Amir (Winner Wijaya). Their characters fit into standard horror tropes; the hot girl, the jock, the tomboy, the outdoorsy type and the nerd.
When they get to the cabin – which is actually a very impressive three-storey art deco affair – in the woods (in reality the Indonesian jungle) we head further into cliché territory; there’s no power or phone reception, but there is a caretaker, a spooky cemetery and a well in the garden.
During the first night, a fatal accident occurs – or is it murder? – and their number is reduced by one (it will go down again). OK so far, so formulaic, but then odd things start happening; continuity gets broken, the dead appear as live people, and things get seriously out of whack.
What’s happening? Well the title of the movie’s a pretty good clue; yep, our young charges are characters in a constantly changing script, and their consciousness of this turns THE DRAFT! into a self-aware thrill ride, a sort of warped version of those ‘choose your own adventure’ books from the 1980s.
It’s adventurous stuff and cheekily done; if you feel that the movie has shortcomings there’s a good chance that one of the characters will address them at some point, as the restrictions of the horror genre are discussed and dissected by characters who above all want to stay alive, and second guess the author, whose constant script revisions turn their world upside down.
Bloody Flicks 