Director: Drew Goddard
Starring: Kristin Connolly, Fran Kranz
This is just a delight of a movie. Horror satire is nothing new. Movies
have been doing it forever, and since Scream came out in the late 90s, it’s
blown up into almost its own genre. But I frankly think this is one of the best
satires of the genre I’ve ever seen. The trick with satire is to make a good
movie anyway in spite of the jokes and riffing on whatever it is you’re making
fun of. You can’t just throw in a bunch of cheap one liners like Scary Movie or
something. There has to be a story to your satire that is independently
entertaining and drives home a unified point. And in my opinion, the more
out-there and ridiculous, the better the satire. I mean, the idea behind this
is that there’s a secret government organization out there that sacrifices
college kids to the Old Gods every year to keep the Earth safe – and they do
this by re-enacting tired horror movie clichés. So there’s your answer: why do
so many horror movies use the same tired formula over and over? Because if they
didn’t, the Old Gods would destroy the Universe.
The Cabin in the Woods works because Whedon does play with your
expectations. It starts off pretty innocuous; just a bunch of college kids
going to, shock of all shocks, a cabin in the woods for the weekend. They’re
better characters than is usual for these kinds of movies, and Whedon’s wry
dialogue endows them with a greater sense of personality than is the norm. But
mostly it just looks like it’s going to be a regular silly horror movie, only
done up with the old Whedon charm and style. The characters laugh and sexual
tension arises and they even find a bunch of creepy stuff in the attic –
almost, you might say, a catalog of jumbled items that bring forth demonic
entities in other films, compiled here all in one room…
What really sets the movie apart is the other scenes, featuring a bunch
of scientists at this government building trying to orchestrate events so that
the kids will die as sacrifices for the Old Gods. The scientists are pretty
silly and mostly serve as comic relief, but the juxtaposition of these scenes
with the more generic horror movie styled ones makes for a really entertaining
and twisted romp. The settings are cool and bring new life to really dated and
tired movie settings – the cold sterile laboratory and the woodsy cabin, both.
The final half hour is the real cincher with this as things blow up and
get messy, fast. By the time our two remaining heroes break into the lab and
encounter all the various monsters, you’re convinced this is the most fun you’ll
have all year. There’s one scene right at the beginning of this sequence, in
which every monster attacks a bunch of soldiers all at once, that is probably
my favorite scene in any movie so far this year. It’s a masterpiece of chaos
and destruction.
The problem with this whole thing is pretty easy to see, really: it’s
not exactly a deep film, and doesn’t really have the dramatic gusto to rank up
with Whedon’s best works. Despite being incredibly enjoyable, it doesn’t have
that spark that elevates it into something truly great – not when stacked up with Whedon’s Angel, anyway, although holding up anything he does to that standard
is a bit unfair. The Cabin in the Woods, though, for all its nudging jocular humor
and spry wit, is a bit of a light snack for the seasoned Whedon fan. Maybe if
it had been twenty minutes longer and established the individual characters
more, it would flesh out into something amazing and more multi-layered (which I
know he loves to do in other works), but as it is, it leaves you wanting more.
And also I think the movies this is satirizing have become fairly passé
at this point, and are no longer the main evil among horror films. While very
funny, I can’t help but think this film is making fun of a social stigma that
almost no longer exists. Nobody really makes movies about dumbass kids going
out in the woods anymore. Maybe if this had been made back in the late 80s it
would have been truly gut-wrenching, but as is, this is a bit outdated, to be
honest.
Despite the problems, Cabin in the Woods is still a really entertaining
romp, and it’s a testament to Whedon’s skill that I can overlook my critical
problems with the film and just take it as a big, silly and fun slice of
cheese. Nothing about this is in any way dissatisfying on a purely aesthetic
level. It’s one of the most fun films this year, and Whedon is practically
winking at you from the sidelines the entire time, a silly, childlike grin on
his face. That’s how this movie should always be watched.
Images copyright of their original owners. I do not own any of them.
