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| The Cabin in the Woods (2012) |
Right off the bat, I'll say that I'm not the most avid viewer of horror movies. Depending on how you classify a 'horror' movie, I'd say the only one I'd seen prior to this was Alien, and this was certainly my first 'slasher' movie. Fortunately, I'm fairly familiar with all the tropes associated with those genres, which is why the sheer brilliance of this movie wasn't lost on me. Because this isn't really a horror movie. It's a deconstruction of the horror movie genre right down to the bone. This is the kind of story I love to see. Hell, this is the kind of story I love to write: something that simultaneously honours and criticises all the tropes of a specific genre whilst still telling its own original story at the same time. I like to think I've done it before, and I certainly hope I continue to do it moving forward, since you just have all your bases covered with a story like that. Using this movie as an example, slasher movie fans will love it because it's showcasing everything that makes their favourite movies so great, while people who dislike slasher films will also love it since it acknowledges everything they don't like about those movies. In that sense, the only people who really won't get a kick out of a movie like this is people who are indifferent to slasher films, and even then, there's enough original material in here to satisfy basically anyone.
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| Kristen Connolly as Dana |
There are essentially two different stories being told here, and while the two play hand-in-hand with each other, I would like to discuss them individually. First, we have the actual slasher movie going down in the forest. And, as slasher films go, especially ones with zombies, yeah, it does its job well. In a vacuum, this story would be considered a fairly standard horror film. Everyone plays their roles well, the characters are likeable if a bit generic (which is, of course, by design), the gore effects are really excellent, and there's a decent build to the eventual killing spree that's inevitable from the start. The film does a great job of showing us all the elements in advance, but then putting them to the back of our mind until right when they become relevant. The giant invisible wall is a great example of this: they show it off right at the start, but you don't remember it exists until right when it gets involved. The actors all do a good job, and the chemistry amongst all five of them really makes them work well as a cohort. It's also important to note the way the film chooses which tropes to pay homage to and which tropes to lampoon is pinpoint accurate. The 'splitting the party' gimmick as well as the 'going off into the woods to have sex' tropes are lampooned really well, and the gratuitous gore is handled well enough to give people what they want while still lampshading it by the end.
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| Chris Hemsworth as Curt |
Jumping to the company aspect of the film, this is what sets the movie apart. Not only does this section of the movie make the entire cabin sequence work so well as satire, but it also gives us our comedy relief, outside of the stoner guy who gets quite a few laughs. It's a really clever style of humour that I love, which is to juxtapose the mundane with the absurd. A company that instigates a mass murder whilst taking bets on how it'll happen is delightfully dark, and they manage to squeeze a lot of humour out of this concept. They also picked the two perfect actors to lead this entire sequence. Richard Jenkins and Bradley Whitford are excellent in this film, and they act as a great parallel to the mayhem of what's going on in the cabin. While the acting from the 'kids' is wonderfully over-the-top and insane, these two have a somewhat reserved performance, more down-to-earth and relatable, which weirdly keeps them likeable even when we see the extent of what they're doing. This section also does an absolutely fantastic job of building the intrigue towards what's actually going on here, and drip-feeds us information at just the right pace to keep us invested.
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| Richard Jenkins as Gary and Bradley Whitford as Steve |
When it gets to the final act and absolutely everything is unleashed, that's when everything gets ramped up to 15. This movie gets super dark, but it does it in that weird kind of tongue-in-cheek way, which is perfect for this kind of story. The film doesn't take itself super seriously, so when things get dire, it's a lot easier to swallow. The only real problem I have with the movie overall is it does have its fair share of conveniences, even outside its satirical nature. And I know that basically any movie will have a few conveniences here and there, but there are a lot here. Some I'm willing to overlook. My basic principal is that if a plot contrivance or even plot-hole comes up and I can explain it away almost immediately, I'm fine with it. If it takes me some serious thought, then it's a problem since the movie could have done a better job of explaining it. If I can't explain it away, then it's obviously more of a problem. And there are a couple of problems with the story that I couldn't think through. I won't reveal them for spoiler reasons, but at the very least, they were things that, while watching the movie itself, I was able to put aside for the sake of enjoyment. While the film was on, I was too entertained to care, which is really exactly what the movie is all about in the first place.
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| Anna Hutchison as Jules |
The Cabin in the Woods (2012) is an intelligent, funny, and even properly scary in some places, love letter to and scathing indictment of slasher films, and it's a must-watch for anyone on either side of the debate. It's something that I could probably appreciate more on a second watch, and I'll probably be getting around to that very soon. 9/10.
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