[Movie Review] The Cabin in the Woods
Yeh, this sums it up. Not mine, btw.
So, let’s try and keep this as non-spoilery as we can…
The Cabin in the Woods is written by Joss Whedon & Drew Goddard and directed by Drew. It stars a few Mutant Enemy alumni, a familiar demigod and has been shelved for several years due to Hollywood schtick: movie companies folding, a failed attempt to post-process into horrible 3-D, you know, the usual.
And it was worth the wait, so long as you can see the damn thing.
Cabin in the Woods details five college kids going into a rustic cabin in the woods to enjoy the weekend and to come across several pillars of horror movies: the creepy gas station attendant, the vaguely, familiar, rustic, cabin in the middle of nowhere, oh, and the Zombies Redneck Torture Family.
The arch-types are all here, the athlete, the bubbly blonde, the brain, the wallflower and the joker. Each of the actors/actresses bring a fair amount of life to each of the characters before they are dispatched and unlike most of the horror movie these days leave some sort of impression due to their dialogue. The survivors of the Zombie Redneck Torture Family tend to take a backseat when they suddenly find that there is something else going on, let’s call it The B Plot.
The B Plot begins the movie and is certainly more interesting in my eyes and got the most laughs from the movie audience I saw it with. The B Plot reminds me of the Season of Angel when the Scoobies worked at Wolf, Ram and Heart. Without giving too much away, the B Plot goes like this: How far are you willing to go to keep the old Gods appeased? The dialogue between several of the characters in the B Plot could have turned into a lovely ideology standoff when the A Plot and B Plot converge but when the shit hits the fan in these horror movies, the shit hits the fan and off the rails we go.
In the end, the movie does not end with our heroes walking away triumphantly or with the Zombies taking over the Earth, it ends as one might expect when the old Gods don’t get their sacrifices.
In several interviews, the creators have called this movie a scary love letter to horror movies and they’re completely correct. It’s a great horror movie like Aliens or The Shining or Halloween because it does not focus on a certain type of scare like torture porn or shaky cam it’a a scary movie.
The only downside to the movie was the fact the lighting for certain interior sets like the woods and towards the end of the movie had me squinting like the final act of Super 8.
Overall, it’s a great movie to see if your a horror fan, if your a Whedon fan, you’ve probably already seen it and if you haven’t seen it, I’d recommend it anyway since it’s better than half the horror flicks that have arrived in the last few years.
Originally published at RKB Writes. You can comment here or there.