A slasher flick with chops
Narratives are engaging to us either because they are novel and we can’t wait to see how they’ll end, or the exact opposite: We already know them by heart and we’re comforted by their unchallenging repetition, which is pretty much why the romantic comedy keeps getting made.
In the case of horror movies, they, too, fall into these distinct camps. They can be stunning and disturbing (think The Shining, Jaws or Psycho), creating an epicenter of shock in the pop culture landscape — or they can be ever more pale imitations of the original (think Friday the 13, Part VIII; Final Destination 5 or Jaws: The Revenge) that follow a carefully calibrated formula of scares, bloodshed and savagery.
Even within those confines, however, perhaps no subgenre of horror film is as deeply set and established as the venerable slasher film. They always involve good-looking young victims whose characters are more or less set in stone: a jock or two and their dumb floozy girlfriends, large of bosom and short of inhibition; a smarter guy, typically with glasses that will most assuredly get broken right before he’s put to rest; a fool who can make jokes even as his friends are mysteriously vanishing around him; and, of course, the virginal girl, smarter than the others, and, generally speaking, the only one who has a fighting chance at survival.
Which brings us to the actor Fran Kranz, who plays Marty — the stoner fool — in co-writer/producer Joss Whedon and director Drew Goddard’s new meta-horror film The Cabin in the Woods. Along with a cast that includes Kristen Connolly, Chris Hemsworth, Richard Jenkins and Bradley Whitford, Kranz tackles Whedon and Goddard’s genre-bending script with just the right amount of seriousness and tongue-in-cheek silliness. Warm and engaging, the 28year-old actor has worked with Whedon before on the short-lived Dollhouse series for Fox, an experience that gave the Yale graduate a great deal of exposure, and a wealth of confidence.
“He brings out the best in me,” Kranz says.
After reading the top-secret script, Kranz felt an immediate kinship for the Marty character. “It was a role that I saw very quickly. You audition for so much stuff and 99 percent of it is rejection, but every now and then you get a role you love and you think that ‘I really think I can do this better than anyone.’”
Marty begins as the biggest joke in the film — as the college friends are about to leave in their rented Winnebago, Marty pulls up languidly in his car, puffing on a one-of-a-kind, collapsible travel mug bong.
But as the body count increases, his stoner shtick starts to make more and more lucid sense. Of all the broad stereotypes assembled in the cabin, it’s Marty who first catches on to the strangely manufactured nature of their situation.
“He’s the first to start seeing that things aren’t really what they appear to be. Something is not right,” Kranz says. “There is definitely a bit of prophet in him.”
Somewhat surprisingly, director Goddard, who also co-wrote the tightly wound script with Whedon, was happy to offer Kranz the chance to improvise some of his scenes, an opportunity Kranz attacked with gusto.
“I had a lot of freedom,” Kranz says. “I think because I was the stoner, the slacker, the fifth wheel, the comic relief. We did a lot of just letting the camera roll on me. I was the only actor really that was encouraged to do that. We just did a lot of playing around and they would let me do choices.”
Which explains to a large degree why Kranz earns the biggest laughs in a film stuffed with in-jokes, knowing references and other hilarious turns. “The fools are fun,” he says. “The fools are our friends. The fools are the life of the party.”
There were also other elements of the character this Shakespearean veteran (favorite character: Hotspur from Henry IV) latched onto early in the production process. “I thought it was really important to ground him,” Kranz says, “and make him a real human. One quality I really latched on to was his doglike loyalty. He really loves these guys. He’s faithful to them until the end.”
Beyond that vague allusion, however, Kranz has clearly been well-schooled to say as little as possible about the film’s various twists and turns. As with most Whedon projects, there was a significant air of secrecy to the entire process of the production.
“It’s definitely a test to see how well you can keep a secret. But I have been good about it because I think the less you know the better,” he says.
As for Whedon’s growing cadre of fanboy acolytes, which started building with the Buffy the Vampire Slayer series in the late ’90s and should get another boost with the May release of the much-anticipated The Avengers, which Whedon wrote and directed, Kranz is thoroughly convinced they will leave the theater happily spooked.
“It’s a genre created by geeks for geeks,” he says with a laugh, “so it’s like the geeks shall survive — and so should the virgin.”