The Draft! review
Four characters in search of an exit.
New movie reviews will not generally contain spoilers…but this one will have to reveal the overriding mechanism that the story uses which isn’t revealed until the second act.
Streaming exclusively on SCREAMBOX September 23
The Draft!
Directed by Yusron Fuadi
Written by Yusron Fuadi and Anindita Suryarasmi
Starring Adhin Abdul Hakim, Anastasya Herzigova, Anggi Waluyo, Haydar Salishz, Winner Wijaya and Ernanto Kusumo
The Draft! Review
Meta-horror has been around longer than people give it credit for…but there’s no denying when it was popularized. 1996’s Scream will forever be the line of demarcation for the meta-horror movement. Wes Craven’s New Nightmare did it two years earlier, of course. Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives was using meta commentary to wink at the genre in 1986. Student Bodies put a kill counter on screen in 1981. Peeping Tom in 1960. Mark of the Vampire in 1935. Maybe even the lost 1927 film that last one remade London After Midnight…but we’ll never know for sure. My point is…depending on your definition of meta-horror…it’s been around for a long time. Pretty much as long as there’s been horror there’s been someone wanting to deconstruct it. But…Scream is fairly recognized as the film that popularized the concept.
I don’t know if The Draft! is the first Indonesian meta-horror movie…but it could be the film that popularizes it in the country. In fact, it should be. The Draft! is an awesome movie. It’s a clever way to approach a concept that can often feel more like a parody than a satire. There’s no parody here. But it’s a very funny movie. Funny in ways that are unique to a part of storytelling that isn’t targeted often in horror. The writing process.
As I stated in the opening text that you probably scrolled past…this review will have to spoil the big idea The Draft! uses to tell its story. There’s no way around it. That was the final warning. The reveal happens roughly around thirty minutes into the movie…where you’d mark the end of act one. So…if you want to go into The Draft! completely unspoiled…I recommend watching it before continuing this review. Ok. Now it’s on you.
The Draft! begins in a somewhat annoying fashion. A group of young people drive up to an old villa for vacation. They spout cliché dialog about haunted houses and personal tragedy. This continues for roughly thirty minutes as two unexpected deaths occur. That’s when something really strange happens. Upon trying to leave the villa…the characters find that their tires have been slashed. Unlike basically every horror movie ever made…the group decides to drive away on the flat tires. It’s always bothered me that characters in movies don’t do this. Who cares if you ruin your rims when you are in a remote location with unexplainable murders happening around you? I’m driving away. Only they can’t. After an hour of driving…the reach a cliff’s edge where the road was…and find themselves mere minutes away from the villa.
That’s when everything in The Draft! changes. Amir (Winer Wijaya) has a crazy theory. One that is seemingly confirmed by the glut of information no one can seem to remember about themselves, their past or even how they got to the villa in the first place. They’re in a horror movie. Self-aware characters aren’t a new concept…but what The Draft! does with them is. They aren’t fictional characters trapped in a horror movie loop doomed to repeat the story forever like in The Final Girls. They’re part of an unfinished screenplay. And, as they discover when the deceased people are found to be alive and unaware of what happened to them, it’s a screenplay being rewritten. This opens the door to an infinite number of possibilities. The group may not be real…but they are alive inside the story. An unfinished story…that they can make more difficult for the author of.
We see glimpses of the “real” world…and the writer desperately trying to finish his story. Or figure out what it even is. The characters are trying to stay one step ahead of him. Making it difficult to progress the story…fighting off whatever he throws at them next.
Essentially…The Draft! is a brilliant meditation on writer’s block. Uncooperative characters of one’s own creation working against your every idea to make it impossible to carry on. It’s brilliant. It explains the cliché characters and dialog. In fact, the group often comments on the quality of the script they live inside. The lazy writer hasn’t given them enough description to be fully formed…or know how long the night at the villa is going to last. That’s where they take matters into their own hands.
The Draft! has a lot of clever ways to use its meta-commentary ideas. What makes it stand out is its focus on screenwriting instead of a finished horror film. We’ve seen self-aware characters caught inside an unchangeable story before. But these characters aren’t in a finished story. They exist in a world without definition…able to define it themselves. To a point, of course. They can’t exit the story and write themselves a happy ending. But they can make the writer’s life a living Hell and make each never-ending night what they want it to be. Waiting for the story to take its next turn…trying to be prepared to face anything. Isn’t that what real life is all about?
Scare Value
The Draft! starts off with some annoyances and cliches. It does that on purpose…and is brilliant in retrospect once you understand what the movie is doing. Simply put, The Draft! is one of the best commentaries on the writing process and writer’s block I’ve ever seen. If you’ve ever attempted to write fiction in any form…The Draft! is going to hit for you. The meta ideas here are clever and fresher than most attempts. A fun one.
4/5
The Draft! Link
Streaming on SCREAMBOX September 23
