Scope: Did you like The Cabin in the Woods (2012)?

Kahn: No I didn’t, and I’ll tell you why. Detention and The Cabin in the Woods say very different things about movies. I think in The Cabin in the Woods we’re meant to be smarter than the characters in the movie. You walk in, you know the genre, you know the clichés, and it reaffirms how stupid the genre is and you get to watch other people being punished for that fact. The only surprise is at the end, and it’s not that great a surprise in my opinion—they justify why those things have to be clichés and then a big hand comes out of the ground. Detention works in the opposite way. It says, “You have no fucking idea how genres work.” Nobody in the movie can predict what’s coming next, and neither can you when you’re watching it. We believe that genre can be changed and that more can always be mined out of it. It’s two very different approaches to genre.

“After School Special: Joseph Kahn’s Detention“