While D’Onofrio’s horror debut is just as graphic and gory as you’d expect from any slasher film, what sets it apart is the fact so much of the story is based around music in the form of songs written by D’Onofrio’s musical friend Sam Bisbee. The logic is that the unwitting victims in this case are a band on a sabbatical to spend time in the woods to work on some new songs, joined by a group of women. Shortly after they arrive, they start disappearing and being systematically slaughtered and there are a bunch of songs in between the kills. (There’s actually a precedent for this sort of thing with B-horror movies of the ’60s and ’70s in which young people would sit around a fire singing songs or dance to some hip rock band, so maybe it’s not such a weird concept.)
Shock Till You Drop sat down with D’Onofrio earlier this week for the following video interview which started simply enough with us discussing his decision to direct and why he chose a “slasher musical” as his first movie, we then transition into the casting of non-actors and music, the influence of films like High Tension, and eventually we get into a fairly lengthy conversation about the quality of acting in horror films as well as briefly touch upon his work in Scott Derickson’s found footage movie Sinister, which D’Onofrio almost literally phoned in (via Skype).
Don’t Go In the Woods is now playing on Video on Demand, but if you’re in New York City and looking to see some horror on Friday the 13th, it’s playing at the Cinema Village.
