Honestly, The Draft! inundates audiences with wild ideas and shoddy dialogue, making any writer want to handle their characters with care.
The Draft!, playing at Fantastic Fest, is an Indonesian horror-comedy that garners laughs and sympathy for the cast trapped in a villa enduring countless chaotic edits. While it takes a moment to build, once it establishes the premise for the viewer, the laughs don’t end. It’s what would happen if Cabin in the Woods met Stranger Than Fiction and had a baby. Honestly, The Draft! inundates audiences with wild ideas and shoddy dialogue, making any writer want to handle their characters with care.
Directed by Yusron Fuadi, the movie opens with five friends heading to a villa getaway for fun and relaxation. After several ominous moments, they soon find themselves in a whirlwind of differing battles. As they fight for survival, the drastic changes allow them to piece together the truth of their situation. As they push for change, increasingly improbable and ridiculous scenarios play out. It’s a hilarious story that also highlights how characters take form and will fight to live.
The Draft! Takes the Cabin in the Woods Premise in a Fresh Direction
The movie comes complete with the typical cast of characters, the stereotypes or archetypes of horror: the nerd, the loudmouth, the tomboy, and so on. The director leans into those common horror themes, characters, and tropes. Ominous music, a creepy old man, a tale of a well, a cemetery, and a death—it’s all here. So, at first, it seems like the usual horror fare—one where they should have turned back the moment they had no cell service. But the Yusron Fuadi flips it comically on its head as things stop adding up. It’s almost like a nightmare where you flip the script on your foes, seizing control as you start to wake up.
The film even taps into the self-awareness current horror characters possess when it comes to scary stories late at night. But when a death occurs, the crew tries to find the culprit as absurd lighting shifts and geographical changes keep them trapped. The entire cast of The Draft! nails the comedic, exaggerated beats but also sells the scares and sorrow. Each one knows their role and plays it up while pushing for more development and changes as the horror genres shift again and again.
Direction Leans Into the Premise
Director Yusron Fuadi pokes fun at tropes and contrivances in the genre that make no sense to the audience while also delivering a fresh take on the genre itself. In that way, it’s reminiscent of the iconic Scream, which also turned slashers on its head with a movie that poked fun at the tropes like the final girl. As the film progresses, the situation becomes more ludicrous and side-splittingly funny. Fuadi holds a lens up to horror and writers, using The Draft!, and greets them warmly. It pokes fun at the tropes and the battle to avoid them in film.
The Draft! is hilarious and an all-around delight as it navigates various cabin-in-the-woods settings. It would perfectly pair with that film and Scream and The Blackening as a triple feature. Yusron Fuadi’s movie shows that the genre still has life and has plenty more to say. With a unique premise and hilarious characters, The Draft! builds a tale as old as time over and over again in a “what if” rabbit hole.
