The Draft (2025)

THE DRAFT is getting a digital release through Blue Finch and has been described as 'the Indonesian CABIN IN THE WOODS', which means that, like that film, it's actually rather difficult to review it without spoiling the revelations that come about twenty minutes in. I'm saying this now so if you don't like such spoilers you can move on (I'd also suggest you avoid the press notes and other publicity). For everyone else here we go:

Five college friends travel to a rotting villa (a very nice location, by the way) for the weekend. Soon one of them is dead, a knife plunged into his chest. Then, suddenly, it looks as if he has been killed by a different method. What's going on? And why can't the students remember much about themselves until they're prompted?

*SPOILERS FOLLOW*

It turns out they are characters in a horror film, the screenplay of which isn't very good and which is being constantly rewritten. Characters get fleshed out, people die and then are suddenly alive again only to die differently. Other random things happen including, eventually, a massed zombie attack.

The problem with running with this kind of concept is that you end up walking a very fine line between saying 'Aren't some horror films crap and poorly written?' and your audience thinking that because you were stuck with your own poorly written screenplay you resorted to a 'meta' approach as a way of getting out of it. 

To do the former takes great skill, which sadly isn't evident here. It would take someone with the talents of an Edgar Wright to make this work (and his version of this kind of storyline could be glorious to behold). As it is we get some entertaining jabs at contemporary Indonesian horror cinema tropes and a few in-jokes, but overall THE DRAFT just shows how much skill was evident in THE CABIN IN THE WOODS in making this kind of idea feel more than an act of scriptwriting desperation. Here's the trailer:

THE DRAFT is out on Digital from Blue Finch Releasing on Monday 20th October 2025