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I Finally Saw Cabin in the Woods (SPOILERS)
12 years ago
Okay, so I finally bit the bullet and watched Cabin in the Woods, the Whedon-penned opus that supposedly changed the horror game forever. A lot of people have been reccommending this film to me, and I want you all to know that I still love and respect you. If I sound like I'm personally attacking your tastes in film, it's only because I'm a cranky curmudgeon who likes to hate things that are popular. I've been putting off watching this movie partly because I've never thought very highly of Joe Whedon and partly to spite the rabid Whedonites who get angry if you don't think Serenity was the second coming of Jesus. But Moody ordered it off Netflix, so we finally sat down and watched it.
So I didn't hate it. I can see why some people liked it, and I would say it's got enough going for it that reasonable people could disagree. My reaction was more dull indifference, which has really been my most positive reaction to a Whedon movie to date.
Moody really didn't like it, because she's an OCD dork who notices every plot hole. I'm much more forgiving of plot holes if I don't notice them while I'm actually watching a movie, so I don't think there were any really major ones.
My main problem with the movie is that, well, it wasn't very good. This was a movie that didn't have any idea what it wanted to be, other than clever. And it's oh so clever, in that non-threatening way that Whedon's movies always are. Therein lies Whedon's genius. His writing isn't really all that deep or clever -- it's mostly just fairly mainstream pop culture allusions and occasional lampshading of the most obvious genre conventions -- but it somehow makes you feel as if YOU ARE THE ONLY PERSON IN THE WORLD TO GET THE JOKE. Anyway, the movie is kind of clever like that. I wouldn't call it a horror movie or a comedy, which are the two genres it was marketed as. It's not scary or creepy or unsettling; the director has no eye for horror, so the whole thing comes off as an extra long episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. In fact, I almost think I remember a few Buffy plots that bear a surprising similarity to the plot of Cabin in the Woods, so many Whedon was recycling an unused show script. At the same time, it's not really funny. There are jokes, but they just exist to be clever. If the movie is anything it's a watered down sci-fi/action flick. Which is okay, I guess, but I'm not sure why you would create a movie lampooning the horror genre and NOT at least try to make it a horror movie. Sure, there are zombies in it, but they barely get any screentime and they always seem to be obscured in shadow, as if not showing us the face of what the audience clearly can tell is a hillbilly zombie will somehow make it more creepy and menacing. No one in the audience is thinking OH SHIT WHAT IS THAT. Just show us the zombie already. But whatever, the zombie hillbillies are pretty generic, nothing all that interesting or different about them. The death scenes are all pretty standard too, nothing horrible enough to evoke a real visceral reaction but also not campy enough to be fun.
Actually, that's a big problem with this movie. Whedon and director Drew Goddard have no sense of when to show things and when to hide things. Everyone was all abuzz about the GREAT BIG SECRET in this movie, but this so-called twist is the BASIC PREMISE of the entire film. Whedonites have been begging people not to reveal the premise because supposedly knowing anything about Cabin before you see it will completely ruin the experience. I noticed a lot of angry fans were accusing newspaper critics of intentionally spoiling the movie, but I don't think it was intentional at all; I think critics probably just assumed, from having watched many many films where the big twist is typically revealed in the film's final act, that something revealed in the first five minutes wasn't intended to be a big secret. But I think fans' insistence on secrecy is also because they realize, deep down, perhaps on a subconscious level, that there's really nothing to this movie other than its gimmick. Once the gimmick is revealed, there's no place else to go for the next 90 minutes. It's not like there's some deep revelation about human nature coming down the pike. It's a Whedon flick, so he has nothnig more to say other than LOL GENRE FICTION HAS CLICHES. I mean, if you knew that Darth Vader was Luke Skywalker's father before the first time that you watched Star Wars, would the movie be forever ruined for you? Would you be unable to glean anything from Citizen Kane if you knew rosebud was a sled when you walked into the theater? I think you'd still be able to enjoy those films even with that forbidden knowledge, because those weren't films that relied entirely on the audiences' minds being BLOWN by those revelations. You'd probably still be able to get involved in Luke's struggle to become a Jedi or find fascination in kane's hubris. But Cabin blows its wad with its gimmick and then...there's nothing else to hold your interest. Like I said, no chills, no comedy, just four dishwater bland teens and one obnoxiously quippy Whedon self-insert sort of going through the vague motions in the thinnest parody of a slasher flick.
I also suspect that Whedonites were insistent in not talking about the premise because they feared that, once people knew what the film was about, they'd just go "Oh, okay, that's dumb" and then just skip it. I wouldn't put it past them, because they have been known to stoop to all sorts of lies to trick people into seeing Whedon films because I geuss they need to keep reinforcing that head narrative they have going about how he's some sort of misunderstoof genius.
So SPOILER ALERT I'm going to spoiler the movie, I guess. It's about these five teens who go to a cabin in the woods and get attacked by zombies... but the opening act TWIST is that it's all being orchestrated by some company and nebbishy guys in ties are watching their every move through cameras strategically placed throughout the house. The question of WHY this company is doing all this is the final act reveal, but (1) there are enough clues that you'll probably figure it out pretty quick and (2) who cares why they are doing it, the why of it isn't all that tantalizing a question.
It turns out that they're doing it because some vague elder gods demand a sacrifice of five archetypical horror movie teens -- a jock, a slut, a nerd, a stoner, and a virgin -- every year or else they'll destroy the world or something. Which is, honestly, a really dumb final twist. I was expecting that it would turn out they were filming a reality show or a snuff film, which, though it would have been slightly more trite and predictable, given the movie some sort of message about, I dunno, violence in media or our hedonistic unfeeling society or something, anything beyond LOL CLICHES. It would have also made a lot more sense, because in the final chaotic act it's revealed that the ritual sacrifice doesn't actually need all the horror movie trappings to be successful, so why did they even bother? Finally, it's a twist that kills both any black humor or any disturbed chills that could be wrested from the premise, because suddenly it turns out that this evil, callous company isn't evil or callous at all, they are just MAKING HARD CHOICES FOR THE GOOD OF THE MANY.
This isn't a bad idea for a movie, but it was handled absolutely wrong. Maybe if we had discovered the truth at the same time that the characters did it would have had more punch. I doubt it, because there were problems with the characters being so goddamn boring that you can't get invested in their fates at all. Normally, I think that knowing someone is being manipulated by unseen forces bent on their destruction would make me naturally sympathize more with the manipulatee, but here I couldn't care less. There is some attempt to make the victim characters a little more fleshed-out (and there are some admittedly amusing bits where the puppet-masters manipulate them to behave more like stereotypical slasher victims) but unfortunately they all end up so generic that you actually feel LESS sympathy for them than if they were stereotypes. Because, hey, if a character is a stereotype, at least you know what they are and how you're supposed to react to them. In this movie, I only figured out that one character was supposed to be "the nerd" because he was randomly wearing glasses for one scene. There's a bit near the end where the nebbishy company guys are all celebrating a successful sacrifice in the control room ignoring the scene playing out on a giant overhead monitor, where the final girl is being mauled by a zombie. I guess it's supposed to show us, I dunno, man's inhumanity to man, but the final girl is so nondescript that I could only see her continued survival as an obscacle to this movie finally being over.
I think the most offensive thing about this movie is that it's being touted as a GAME CHANGER that totally plays with your expectations of horror tropes, yet Whedon only seems to be aware of ONE trope, namely that teen slashers always involve the same archetypical victims. That's akin to making a parody of Star Trek based only on one joke, that red shirts die a lot. I can only assume from watching this that Whedon isn't a horror fan, because he really doesn't seem to have any love or interest for the artform, so I'm not sure why though he should be the one to spoof it. Probably just because it was an easy target.
There is ONE detail in this movie that actually works, and that's the weird one-way mirror behind the creepy painting. That would have been a great way to indicate that something weird was going on here, but, since the audience already KNOWS what's going on, it's kind of wasted. Also, neither the painting nor the mirror ever really have any bearing on anything. The painting doesn't foreshadow anything and it's never referenced again. And why was there a one-way mirror inside the cabin? It's clearly established that the puppet masters are watching the proceedings from a command center far below the cabin, so why is the mirror there? Did they watch previous rituals from inside the cabin itself? That seems needlessly dangerous and stupid. So I guess it was just there to fail at being unsettling.
To give credit where due, it could have been really good, if the creative team had bothered to do anything beyond the initial gimmick. It was an interesting idea completely botched by an execution more concerned with appearing cool and deep than in actually making a cohesive movie. And some of the monsters that escaped at the end were cool. Too bad we barely got to see any of them. I've definitely seen much worse movies, but then again most of those movies aren't ballyhooed as being the best thing since sliced bread. Ultimately, it's like that Abe Lincoln quote about that book that will appeal to people who like that sort of book: If you're a Joe Whedon fan, then you'll probably like this movie becaue it is a Joe Whedon movie.
It's definitely no MOTHER'S DAY MASSACRE, I'll tell you that!
So I didn't hate it. I can see why some people liked it, and I would say it's got enough going for it that reasonable people could disagree. My reaction was more dull indifference, which has really been my most positive reaction to a Whedon movie to date.
Moody really didn't like it, because she's an OCD dork who notices every plot hole. I'm much more forgiving of plot holes if I don't notice them while I'm actually watching a movie, so I don't think there were any really major ones.
My main problem with the movie is that, well, it wasn't very good. This was a movie that didn't have any idea what it wanted to be, other than clever. And it's oh so clever, in that non-threatening way that Whedon's movies always are. Therein lies Whedon's genius. His writing isn't really all that deep or clever -- it's mostly just fairly mainstream pop culture allusions and occasional lampshading of the most obvious genre conventions -- but it somehow makes you feel as if YOU ARE THE ONLY PERSON IN THE WORLD TO GET THE JOKE. Anyway, the movie is kind of clever like that. I wouldn't call it a horror movie or a comedy, which are the two genres it was marketed as. It's not scary or creepy or unsettling; the director has no eye for horror, so the whole thing comes off as an extra long episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. In fact, I almost think I remember a few Buffy plots that bear a surprising similarity to the plot of Cabin in the Woods, so many Whedon was recycling an unused show script. At the same time, it's not really funny. There are jokes, but they just exist to be clever. If the movie is anything it's a watered down sci-fi/action flick. Which is okay, I guess, but I'm not sure why you would create a movie lampooning the horror genre and NOT at least try to make it a horror movie. Sure, there are zombies in it, but they barely get any screentime and they always seem to be obscured in shadow, as if not showing us the face of what the audience clearly can tell is a hillbilly zombie will somehow make it more creepy and menacing. No one in the audience is thinking OH SHIT WHAT IS THAT. Just show us the zombie already. But whatever, the zombie hillbillies are pretty generic, nothing all that interesting or different about them. The death scenes are all pretty standard too, nothing horrible enough to evoke a real visceral reaction but also not campy enough to be fun.
Actually, that's a big problem with this movie. Whedon and director Drew Goddard have no sense of when to show things and when to hide things. Everyone was all abuzz about the GREAT BIG SECRET in this movie, but this so-called twist is the BASIC PREMISE of the entire film. Whedonites have been begging people not to reveal the premise because supposedly knowing anything about Cabin before you see it will completely ruin the experience. I noticed a lot of angry fans were accusing newspaper critics of intentionally spoiling the movie, but I don't think it was intentional at all; I think critics probably just assumed, from having watched many many films where the big twist is typically revealed in the film's final act, that something revealed in the first five minutes wasn't intended to be a big secret. But I think fans' insistence on secrecy is also because they realize, deep down, perhaps on a subconscious level, that there's really nothing to this movie other than its gimmick. Once the gimmick is revealed, there's no place else to go for the next 90 minutes. It's not like there's some deep revelation about human nature coming down the pike. It's a Whedon flick, so he has nothnig more to say other than LOL GENRE FICTION HAS CLICHES. I mean, if you knew that Darth Vader was Luke Skywalker's father before the first time that you watched Star Wars, would the movie be forever ruined for you? Would you be unable to glean anything from Citizen Kane if you knew rosebud was a sled when you walked into the theater? I think you'd still be able to enjoy those films even with that forbidden knowledge, because those weren't films that relied entirely on the audiences' minds being BLOWN by those revelations. You'd probably still be able to get involved in Luke's struggle to become a Jedi or find fascination in kane's hubris. But Cabin blows its wad with its gimmick and then...there's nothing else to hold your interest. Like I said, no chills, no comedy, just four dishwater bland teens and one obnoxiously quippy Whedon self-insert sort of going through the vague motions in the thinnest parody of a slasher flick.
I also suspect that Whedonites were insistent in not talking about the premise because they feared that, once people knew what the film was about, they'd just go "Oh, okay, that's dumb" and then just skip it. I wouldn't put it past them, because they have been known to stoop to all sorts of lies to trick people into seeing Whedon films because I geuss they need to keep reinforcing that head narrative they have going about how he's some sort of misunderstoof genius.
So SPOILER ALERT I'm going to spoiler the movie, I guess. It's about these five teens who go to a cabin in the woods and get attacked by zombies... but the opening act TWIST is that it's all being orchestrated by some company and nebbishy guys in ties are watching their every move through cameras strategically placed throughout the house. The question of WHY this company is doing all this is the final act reveal, but (1) there are enough clues that you'll probably figure it out pretty quick and (2) who cares why they are doing it, the why of it isn't all that tantalizing a question.
It turns out that they're doing it because some vague elder gods demand a sacrifice of five archetypical horror movie teens -- a jock, a slut, a nerd, a stoner, and a virgin -- every year or else they'll destroy the world or something. Which is, honestly, a really dumb final twist. I was expecting that it would turn out they were filming a reality show or a snuff film, which, though it would have been slightly more trite and predictable, given the movie some sort of message about, I dunno, violence in media or our hedonistic unfeeling society or something, anything beyond LOL CLICHES. It would have also made a lot more sense, because in the final chaotic act it's revealed that the ritual sacrifice doesn't actually need all the horror movie trappings to be successful, so why did they even bother? Finally, it's a twist that kills both any black humor or any disturbed chills that could be wrested from the premise, because suddenly it turns out that this evil, callous company isn't evil or callous at all, they are just MAKING HARD CHOICES FOR THE GOOD OF THE MANY.
This isn't a bad idea for a movie, but it was handled absolutely wrong. Maybe if we had discovered the truth at the same time that the characters did it would have had more punch. I doubt it, because there were problems with the characters being so goddamn boring that you can't get invested in their fates at all. Normally, I think that knowing someone is being manipulated by unseen forces bent on their destruction would make me naturally sympathize more with the manipulatee, but here I couldn't care less. There is some attempt to make the victim characters a little more fleshed-out (and there are some admittedly amusing bits where the puppet-masters manipulate them to behave more like stereotypical slasher victims) but unfortunately they all end up so generic that you actually feel LESS sympathy for them than if they were stereotypes. Because, hey, if a character is a stereotype, at least you know what they are and how you're supposed to react to them. In this movie, I only figured out that one character was supposed to be "the nerd" because he was randomly wearing glasses for one scene. There's a bit near the end where the nebbishy company guys are all celebrating a successful sacrifice in the control room ignoring the scene playing out on a giant overhead monitor, where the final girl is being mauled by a zombie. I guess it's supposed to show us, I dunno, man's inhumanity to man, but the final girl is so nondescript that I could only see her continued survival as an obscacle to this movie finally being over.
I think the most offensive thing about this movie is that it's being touted as a GAME CHANGER that totally plays with your expectations of horror tropes, yet Whedon only seems to be aware of ONE trope, namely that teen slashers always involve the same archetypical victims. That's akin to making a parody of Star Trek based only on one joke, that red shirts die a lot. I can only assume from watching this that Whedon isn't a horror fan, because he really doesn't seem to have any love or interest for the artform, so I'm not sure why though he should be the one to spoof it. Probably just because it was an easy target.
There is ONE detail in this movie that actually works, and that's the weird one-way mirror behind the creepy painting. That would have been a great way to indicate that something weird was going on here, but, since the audience already KNOWS what's going on, it's kind of wasted. Also, neither the painting nor the mirror ever really have any bearing on anything. The painting doesn't foreshadow anything and it's never referenced again. And why was there a one-way mirror inside the cabin? It's clearly established that the puppet masters are watching the proceedings from a command center far below the cabin, so why is the mirror there? Did they watch previous rituals from inside the cabin itself? That seems needlessly dangerous and stupid. So I guess it was just there to fail at being unsettling.
To give credit where due, it could have been really good, if the creative team had bothered to do anything beyond the initial gimmick. It was an interesting idea completely botched by an execution more concerned with appearing cool and deep than in actually making a cohesive movie. And some of the monsters that escaped at the end were cool. Too bad we barely got to see any of them. I've definitely seen much worse movies, but then again most of those movies aren't ballyhooed as being the best thing since sliced bread. Ultimately, it's like that Abe Lincoln quote about that book that will appeal to people who like that sort of book: If you're a Joe Whedon fan, then you'll probably like this movie becaue it is a Joe Whedon movie.
It's definitely no MOTHER'S DAY MASSACRE, I'll tell you that!
I get the point of the movie but really? wth! after 30 mintues i fast forward through the movie just to see what was going on and it just pissed me off how it ended.
another movie that disappointed me was the army of darkness... i would get to the point where the army would invade the castle and pass out...so i fast forwarded through and i got mad that the ending was lame.
still cant decide which was lamer of the two movies so far.
Have you seen splice? that i thought was pretty good. Another one is This is The End is a funny movie.
it makes me sad because as you said it is a neat concept, but was just executed so poorly.
the only part i like is when everything escaped and it was just random monster chaos
I was wondering when you'd get around to this one. Even if your reaction is about what I expected it would be from you :P
Spoilers to be had in part of it to (yeah, I know, I'll get to that too).
I notice a few of your criticisms seem to be less about the movie and more about the fanbase's reaction to it. Which is... well, not exactly the movie's fault? Fans are fans are fans, especially Whedon ones (the ones that bothered to show up, because I assure you, plenty missed out. Plus, gotta give Goddard his due here, it was as much his idea as Whedon's). The idea of not being spoiled when you go in is somewhat needless in and of itself, simply because you're right, the movie reveals what it's doing from frame one. The spoiler debate is something that's raged on in rather bizarre directions over recent years, though I prefer to view it as just going into something blind for the sake of getting some wonder out of it the first time (sorry, tangent there. But for real, I'm the sort who doesn't even watch trailers anymore). There is a mystery to be had in the why of it all, and it's one that needs a bit of build up. Thus the desire to try and dissuade folks from learning too much in advance before they spoil it for themselves.
The point about people calling it a "game changer" is generally addressed by it being spoken by over-enthusiastic fans who don't understand what that term actually means. Scream was a game changer because it changed how studios made genres films, how people watched them, and how characters were written/cast for them. It quite literally changed the game. This movie is not, because it's something that's too much of an outlier to have any real effect on the genre as a whole (save maybe make for a very odd viewing experience of the Evil Dead remake).
Moving on, I must object to your ideas that the movie had very little to say, or that it was made by folks who didn't seem to care much about horror. This is about as much of a love letter to horror movies as you can get, and it's based around exploring the very idea of why we watch them in the first place. I mentioned this way back when in your other journal about this movie (this comment here. In fact, I'm repeating a lot of my argument out of that one), but this movie is essentially a reconstruction of the whole horror genre. It constructs its own 4th wall by way of the Downstairs crowd, and it looks at all the various tropes and cliches put into play. Those Old Gods who require constant blood sacrifices through weirdly specific rituals with flimsy characters and needless sex and gore? That's us, the horror audience. For decades we've thrived on the familiar, the same old same old, always somewhat weary (if not downright hostile) when something different comes out way. It's why there's a tired, yet complacent, sigh when it's the reliable old undead zombie rednecks who are out on the prowl, when the very-specific Merman is left out in the cold (because who would finance a halfway decent Merman movie?). Horror fans are fickle creatures, always lusting for something we can't quite place, and becoming so buried in crap that we become okay with the expected. When something truly unique comes along, we simply don't know what to do with it, it upsets the status quo too much. To dismiss it all as just another gimmick is... well, I'm actually not sure. What is it people want these days at the movies?
Beyond that, things get subjective. The humor strikes the perfect chord for me, and I'm all for the characters. A lot gets told about them in a little time at the beginning, and I've always found it very effective, a la Attack the Block. Plus, compare them to most slasher protagonists, at which point they become so three-dimensional they practically pop off the screen). This movie may prefer to walk the comedy line more than the horror one (not a bad thing; when's the last time Evil Dead II scared anyone?), but it's heart and soul are firmly in the depths of the genre as a whole.
I could go on, but I'm unsure how much my walls-o'-text get read. I do want it to be known I'm not trying to be especially hostile or contradictory. I'm just genuinely perplexed about this particular viewpoint, since it doesn't ring true at all to me.
I dunno, I get what you're saying about the "old gods" representing horror fans, but I still don't see that as much of a revelation. Laying the blame for shitty generic movies at the feet of the stupid audience seems to be a popular way for Hollywood to absolve itself for any responsibility for its own hackiness. It's partly true so I won't fault it too much, but I don't think it's a very fresh or insightful message. It mostly feels like passing the buck. However, I'm probably being unfair by demanding that this movie "say something." I usually don't care whether a movie has anything meaningful to say as long as it's entertaining. I'm only nitpicking about this because the movie seems to desperately want to say something fresh and new.
When I said that the movie is made by people who have no love for horror....well, this is hard to explain, because they clearly know enough about horror to create a convincing facsimile of a horror movie. It's got all the proper elements of a horror film, but they don't fit together right. To use a horribly offensive and surely grossly innaccurate analogy, it feels like a horror movie put together by someone with severe Aspergers: There's a meticulous attention to assembling all the necessary elements of a horror movie, but there doesn't seem to be much understanding of the emotions that those elements need to evoke to make it all come together.
And that's almost ALL due to the characterization of the five victim characters. The movie's premise was good (if not revolutionary), all the scenes back at the organization were passable, and the final reel with the monster purge was actually pretty entertaining -- but unfortunately none of that really matters because the real heart and soul of the film NEEDED to be the victim characters. We need to feel empathy for them or else everything falls flat -- it's not scary or disturbing if we're not emotionally upset by their deaths and t. Maybe the film was trying to say something about the audience's emotional divorce from onscreen violence by purposely making theses characters so dull that the audience won't get invested in them. It's possible and it would make Cabin in the Woods a work of BRECHTIAN GENIUS, but I kind of doubt that was the intention.
Here's my opinion. The movie WANTED these characters to be more than just the usual shallow horror victim stereotypes; for the central concept to work, they would have to be. The idea that they were being subtly manipulated to become those stereotypes was nifty, but it was handled very poorly. First, although the film tried to go out of its way to show us that they WEREN'T just WHORE/VIRGIN/JOCK/NERD, it didn't really give us anything to indicate what they WERE. So they're mostly interchangeable quip machines for the first half of the movie, all exchanging the standard Whedon dialogue that makes everyone sound the same. When they start to behave in steretypical horror cliches, it should have been obvious that they were acting out of character because we would have seen that they were acting wildly differently than they were at the start of the movie. But because their early, unaltered personalities were all ciphers, I could only tell that they were acting "different" because on-screen characters conveniently pointed it out (Like when the stoner asks "why is he acting all alpha-male, he's a sociology major!") Like I said in my original review, I had no clue that that one guy was supposed to be fulfilling a nerd niche except that he suddenly acquired glasses for no reason. I guess the movie was trying to be subtle, but it really needed to be more extreme to be effective. It was also a little weird that the stoner character started the movie as a horror cliche -- which might be why he was the only one of the five who seemed to have any personality at all.
Really, this is the problem that completely sinks the movie. We're not meant to feel connected to the guys in the organization, so it's fine for them to be snarky, cynical quip machines -- in some ways, it probably works better since it establishes how mundane this entire event is for them. But the victim characters need to be written sincerely and that's what was missing here.
Also, I should point out that, YES, I am aware that lots of horror movies suffer from this problem, so Cabin in the Woods is not unique in that respect. I just feel like it thought it could get around this problem solely on the strength of the premise.
Related to that, there's the issue that this movie is considered flawed for not being scary, or even trying to be scary. I don't see that as a fault there, as I don't see that as an intent. For better or for worse, there's a considerably large chunk of the horror genre that's not scary at all (objectively, I mean. Sometimes it's just bloody, or fun, or whathaveyou), but is still horror all the same due to the subject matter. The only thing the movie plays straight in terms of any sort of dark, scary nature are the first few Upstairs kills, and even then they're more grisly than scary. Once things go downstairs, there's no fear, other than that of a complete global apocalypse. Not scary, but still horror (the horror/comedy combo being something that's been around for so long the line between the two becomes fuzzy, but this simply isn't a straight comedy).
On the characters, it's tricky to argue for. A big part of liking them means liking the humor and dialogue that comes with them, which I was all over. But I do see what you're saying about the archtypes they're supposed to fulfill, but that's also part of the movie. It rushes through it a bit at the start in the dorm room, but that basically sets everyone up without getting the pacing bogged down; our female lead is coming off a bad relationship with her professor, our jock is rather intelligent (when he starts going over reading assignments and books to read), and our stoner is... well, the stoner. I'll admit that the other girl and "smart" guy only get so much before they're forced into their stereotypical corners, but that's at least somewhat addressed later in the movie. As the Director says, "We work with what we've got." The movie's got to do a lot with a little when it comes to characterization, and I still think it succeeds (again, compared to most horror, it knocks it out of the park).
Cabin is a bad movie and the main reason to watch it is for the behind-the-scenes stuff. The most entertaining part is when all the monsters are let out of their cages... if that's your thing then it's a movie you'd like! That's what I want to see in a "scary" movie. I don't want scary as much as I want creepy monsters that kill people in interesting ways. If you're a Whedon fan then you'll like it because uh... I dunno... I can't think of anything. I'm not a fan of his and I don't know what his fans like.
Joe Whedon fans like Joe Whedon movies.
People have told me that I shouldn't think of Cabin in the Woods as a horror film and they're right that it's not -- but I'm having trouble relating to it as anything else because it's got all the trappings of a horror film and it's clearly set up as a horror film (albeit a semi-satirical one). It's weird to think that something that follows this format so closely WOULDN'T want audiences to engage with it as a horror flick -- after all, I assume we're supposed to be disturbed/upset by the death scenes? So even if it's not really a genre film per se, the goal is the same, to evoke the same gut response from the audience. The director is clearly much more in his element when the movie completely jettisons horror or action during the purge sequence; THAT bit was really well done, even though it couldn't redeem the whole movie for me. I think he was much more comfortable with that -- and also the semi-comedic organization sequences -- so he didn't realize how vital the scenes with the victims were to holding the whole shebang together.
I'm also a terrible pompous blowhard. X/
I think you're spot on about about Whedon's talent being a kind of inoffensive cleverness that makes the viewer think they're the only one to get the joke. This is the PERFECT way of describing that whole phenomenon.
You might like House of the Devil, if you haven't seen it already. It is painstakingly filmed as an 80s horror movie, but was made in 2009 or something. Brilliant stuff :)
So it's exactly as clever as Funny Games and Rubber. Yep, sure changed a lot of games.
The movie was enjoyable enough and I'd watch it again, but man, really? This is what the defenders come up with? Like no one's ever tried to make horror fans accountable for liking horror. You know, except for the last forty years of media (that thinks we're gore-worshiping potential serial killers), plus the genre itself many times.
You got it on the head when you brought up Buffy; he AGAIN tried to make a non-standard horror and ended up making a genre joke dressed up in horror's clothes. Fun for what it is but nothing genius.
I don't even smoke and I want to buy or make that bong.