It’s not often that I say this about a horror film, but Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard’s ‘The Cabin In The Woods’ was one of the best films of the year when it came out in 2012. Now, in the same way that it drew in the five unsuspecting teens into its horrors, the cabin will do the same at its new home at Universal Studios just in time for Halloween.
Before I continue, there are some SPOILERS contained in the conversation about this attraction, so if you haven’t seen ‘The Cabin In The Woods’ yet, then you should not continue. (Also, what’s wrong with you?! You should’ve seen it by now…)
Universal Studios Orlando will be teaming with Goddard to create a maze based on his acclaimed film for the park’s annual Halloween Horror Nights celebration. The event has become a beloved tradition for horror fans as mazes in the past based on properties such as ‘Friday the 13th’, ‘Silent Hill’, and ‘The Walking Dead’ have proven to be a great success. And now, during this upcoming Halloween season, ‘The Cabin In The Woods’ joins this proud pantheon of attractions built to scare the pants off of guests.
A new storyline was created for this maze that involves the guests becoming new recruits to work at the facility seen in the film that designs the horrific rituals that act as a sacrifice to the Old Gods. Universal Orlando Entertainment team member Michael Aiello goes into some detail about just how much of the film will be represented in the attraction:
“We are building the cabin completely. You’re going to walk through a forest to get there. You’re going into the cabin. You’re going to go into the cube cells. We’re literally taking everything we can in the film and giving you a kind of best-of montage of the film with this kind of linking story. You’re going to be in the control room when merman attacks.”
Speaking of the terrifying merman (seriously), Aiello goes on to say that many of the monsters seen and talked about in the film will come to life in this year’s maze and will be portrayed by “scare-actors” as opposed to animatronics. There will even be some characters from Universal’s long history of horror:
“We’re trying to adapt this film as best as we physically can in the context of what we have. The whole idea of the maze is to have varying creatures in it. In the maze, we’ve got many that were in the forefront of a lot of the scenes — the ballerina, the Sugarplum Fairy, the Hell Lord — but also too there are a couple rooms where we’re kind of featuring some of the creatures that were just on the screens in the control room of movie. And then in the finale we’ve got a couple characters that could open up from Halloweens past, our own events, because we were granted amazing permission to be able to include some of our lineage into ‘Cabin’s’ lineage.”
Regarding this finale, fans of the movie shouldn’t expect a rehashing of the film’s ending. The rep first joked that “the gods were very expensive” before saying that the guests would be “surrounded” by whatever they’re planning.
Right now, Goddard and Lionsgate are working with Aiello and Universal on the script for the maze, but they wouldn’t say if any cast members would be involved. Guess you’ll just have to go through the maze to see if Chris Hemsworth or Fran Kranz is there to save you. However, the director/co-writer of the movie did express his excitement that this is all happening:
“My wish for ‘Cabin’ was always that it would live on outside the film, that people would take that ball and run with it, and I can’t imagine a better fit for what we were trying to do with the movie than to make a maze out of it.”
By the sounds of things, this year’s maze will be the things that nightmares are made of. As much as I loved the movie, you definitely won’t catch me within a hundred miles of Universal Studios this fall. But if you’re interested in getting up close and personal with the many horrors of ‘The Cabin In The Woods’, Halloween Horror Nights 23 will run on select nights from September 20 – November 2 exclusively at Universal Studios Orlando.
Source: Zap2It
