A DOSE OF TERROR: THE CABIN IN THE WOODS
THE CABIN IN THE WOODS
It was only a matter of time before a movie would come out that would mock the monster genre. Not only that, but have it take place in the most common of locations – a cabin in the woods. So, if a self-aware and clichéd movie is your thing, The Cabin in The Woods is for you. Personally, I didn’t fall for the hype.
If I was forced to pick out the pros for this movie, I’d say that it was funny, realistically violent, and somewhat original. The bad thing about the originality is that it took a backseat to what was probably the most formulaic horror movie I’ve seen in years, regardless of that being the point or not. The Cabin in The Woods was fun, I’ll give it that, and it was nice to see certain monsters done right, and also have some nice practical effects going on at the same time. But I can’t like a movie based only on the visuals, there has to be something that draws me in and keeps me interested in what happens next. Sadly, that wasn’t the case; the most interesting part of the movie was what we DIDN’T see.
The premise starts out simple enough, yet somewhat unique – lead a group of archetypal characters to a cabin, control the situation from an underground control room and place bets on who will die and by which type of monster. So the first 20-30 minutes had my attention whenever I first saw this, but quickly turns into something any real horror fan has seen time and time again.
With all of the generic shit going on, I had a hard time caring about any of the characters when all I could think of was the awesome back story which was the entire reason to sacrifice these assholes in the first place. There are huge Gods that live in the core of the Earth, and if they aren’t given their (annual?) sacrifices, they will rise up and destroy all of humanity. Other countries hold their own types of sacrifices as well; I guess the goal is for one of the countries participating successfully carry out the creative murders of their respective group.
That leads me to one of the many problems I have with The Cabin in The Woods – why does each country seemingly have their own type of people to be killed? We see clips of other countries but are only really shown Japan, in which a classroom of girls are to be killed by some ghost. So will this satisfy the Gods? Is each country given their own demographic to be killed? How do these Gods tell each country what they want? Does only one country need to successfully murder everyone? Questions like those are what make me not like this movie. While certain things are interesting, they don’t make sense in the least bit.
Oh look, there are a shit load of different monsters, too bad the ones focused on during these few scenes were lame. And guess what, this was already done better in Thirteen Ghosts; at least there we were given some story on each of the monsters. Not all was lost during the final 15 minutes of the movie, though; some of the monsters/bad guys coming out of these elevators were pretty awesome. I would have rather followed the CCTV footage instead of what we actually saw.
Then there is the ending, after an awful cameo from Sigourney Weaver (a part that could have been played by anyone), we learn that the two surviving characters are the most selfish pieces of shit to have ever lived. The Virgin must kill the Fool in order to please the Gods, if she doesn’t, they will rise up and destroy everything and everyone. What better way to end all humanity than by smoking a joint, completely ignoring the instructions of the Gods? Obviously for these idiots the last thing going through their mind was to get high one more time. And yes, the final 5 seconds of the movie was the best part.
GRADE
Violence – A
Realism – F
Suspense – F
May 7, 2014 @ 1:29 am
Great article Steve, I totally agree on all your points.
I know we’re most likely in the minority here but I didn’t buy into this movie either, it’s not half as clever as most make it out to be. I don’t care for any of the characters and unlike most “cabin in the woods” movies there isn’t even a cool slasher/killer to root for.
And as you mentioned we really don’t get enough of the unique back story because the movie spends to much time focusing on the admittedly cliche part of the story.
May 7, 2014 @ 9:17 am
Doesn’t the reveal of the “gods” and the reason for the sacrifices come near the last act of the movie? How could it be that “all you could think of was the awesome back story”, when you wouldn’t have know about it for 3/4 of the movie? Are we strictly speaking on a revisit?
Now, that’s not to say I totally disagree with you, because I didn’t think this movie was all it was cracked up to be, but in my opinion, I thought the “god’s needing sacrifices” angle was as cliched as the rest. I felt cheated out of an exciting explanation as to why they were doing what they were doing. When it got to the last act, I was waiting for this great reveal, at it kind of felt like a boil over…. a big let down… too lazy.
Either way… I enjoyed reading your take on it. Good food for thought.
May 7, 2014 @ 9:33 am
We were given a reason for the sacrifices, yes, but that was only for the United States. Japan didn’t follow the same routine as Sigourney Weaver described at the end. She made it seem as if these exact types of people needed to be killed in order to save humanity…ok, well what about the classroom full of little girls, or the other couple of countries we were shown failing?
I think “back story” might have been the wrong phrase, I guess what I meant is that the UNKNOWN or the UNSEEN aspects of this movie were far more (potentially) interesting than what we actually saw. As cool as the “zombie hillbilly torture family” was, there were so much more better monsters on that list.
This movie is similar to The Purge, we’re focusing on an over done scenario when there are FAR greater stories to be told within the movie’s world.