Joss Whedon has built a strong cult following around his
projects that have a tendency to subvert genre conventions and put a new spin
on familiar stories. His short-lived TV series “Firefly” and the follow-up film
Serenity was a sci-fi space western. Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which most
people forget was a movie before it was a popular TV show starring Sarah
Michelle Gellar, took the dumb blonde caricature who is always the first to die
in horror films and made her the hero, an ass-kicking, smart-talking, wooden
stake-wielding defender of humanity. As co-writer along with Drew Goddard, who
directs, and producer of The Cabin in the
Woods, Whedon turns his attention to the slasher/horror/torture porn set of
genres and sub-genres.
