Fine. I still stand by A till the end of my days, but maybe there's a little bit of truth in B. But you can't really blame me for not expecting to love it. I like to use this analogy:
If I have a bag of potato chips that expired 40 years ago, and I dust off the bag, open it up, take out a chip and eat it, and my reaction was "Ewww! God, that's disgusting!" but then I proceeded to eat another chip, have the same reaction only this time I'm dry-heaving, and then another chip and another with the same result every time, by the time I got to that sixth potato chip wouldn't it not only be reasonable but expected of me to be a tad apprehensive?
I'm sorry I can't help myself from not liking the way Joss Whedon writes. I'm very, very sorry for that. And I'm very, very sorry that Whedonites get so enraged by someone having even a middling opinion of him. But why should I expect to suddenly and without warning or cause suddenly adore something he wrote, when every single thing he writes has the exact same things in it that bug me? That would make no sense.
But that's not what I came to talk to you about today. Came to talk about a cabin.
Yes, it's "The Cabin In The Woods," the horror film that was getting all kinds of buzz and crazy good reviews all over the place. The phrase "game changer™" was thrown around quite a bit as I recall. That's enough to get me worried any time that's brought up, honestly. But hey, a lot of people I know saw it and loved it. So why not? Let's give this a spin.
AW CRAP.
I knew that intro was there for a reason. Am I really doing this? Am I seriously having to go back into Whedon territory again? Man, every time one of these comes up I'm having to walk on freaking eggshells. I'm just tired of having every critique I make of this guy's work torn apart while people call me a jerk and threaten to revoke my "Nerd Card." No, you know what? I've got that mess laminated, okay? You don't even know the pristine condition my Nerd Card is in. It's still in its original packaging, bitch. You ain't revoking crap.
But before this gets too negative before I even start talking about "The Cabin In The Woods," let me throw this slightly confusing disclaimer up right meow:
I thought it was good. But I disliked it. But I didn't hate it. I don't think.
I could end this entry right there, because that absurd, confusing sentence sums up my feelings on "The Cabin In The Woods," which was that while I thought it was a well made, generally well written movie, my finals thoughts were so freaking jumbled that I honestly have no idea whether or not I liked it. I just came away saying "What the hell did I just watch?" And it wasn't always in the good way.
This is going to be an extraordinarily difficult movie to write about, seeing as the main draw of this movie is the slow reveal of the lingering big question: "What the crap is going on here?" Once you know what's really going down in this movie, I would imagine much of whatever magic contained would be lost, so I'm going to avoid spoilers as much as I can. Let's say that for now, I won't give anything away that the trailer wouldn't have given away already. Eventually I'll have to get into spoilers, but I'll let you know when I do.
The movie begins as a group of five friends who look like they came from casting call of a "Friday the 13th" sequel get together to go to the titular cabin in the woods. They are all extraordinarily stock in the fact that they are all walking stereotypes for the slasher genre. You've got the Jock, the Whore, the Nerd, the Stoner, and the Virgin. But here's the part where the whole "clever bit" comes into play - that is exactly on purpose.
You know, if I were in a group of people so stereotypical, I wouldn't leave the house.
In a control room, there are a bunch of people following these kids, setting them up along the way to be victims in what can only be called a slasher movie, only in real life. These people are literally setting up these kids to be butchered. The "why" is the big question going on throughout "The Cabin In The Woods," which is why I'm really going to have to leave the description at that. Any more would give too much away, which is something I don't want to do.
The cast has Chris Hemsworth as the Jock, and is probably the most recognizable face around as long as you don't count Richard Jenkins and Bradley Whitford as the two control room guys we follow most of the movie. Nobody else of real note is in it, unless you count Anna Hutchison as the Whore. She was the Yellow Ranger on one of the numerous Power Rangers series. So yeah, there's that. I suppose it's worth noting that "The Cabin In The Woods" contains a scene where you see the Yellow Rangers boobs. That's something I guess.
One person I was excited to see on the cast list was Jodelle Ferland, an actress I really like who tends to always play a creepy young(ish) girl. And what do you know? She's playing a zombie here. And while it was great to see her, why they gave her no lines is beyond me. It's almost like they intentionally wasted talent. There's also another actress I really like who popped in at the end in a surprise cameo, but I wouldn't want to spoil anything. (Protip: Look at the labels at the bottom of this entry.)
Kristen Connolly, playing the Virgin, is the real main character however, and to be honest I liked her. Yeah her part was just as stock as everyone else's, but hey, she was charming and pretty cute as well. So I guess I didn't want to see her die. That means that the movie is doing at least one thing right, because usually I hate characters in slasher movies.
Like this guy.
Oh man. It had to happen at one point, didn't it? The freaking Stoner. You know, it's not that Fran Kranz did a terrible job with this character, it's just that I can't stand that guy. From the minute he shows up, I know that I'm going to have to suffer through endless monologues from them about how "The system is keeping us down!" and "You've got to open your doors of perception, man!" It just gets so old so fast, and I just want them to die quickly as possible. And of course the first time we see the Stoner he is driving a car while smoking from a bong the size of Hulk Hogan's leg. Truly this character will be a delight.
I just miss guys like Shaggy who weren't so militant about "sticking it to the man." He was just mellow, and ate Scooby Snacks. What's so wrong with that?
That also brings me to the spoiler section of the review. I'd advise skipping to the end if you haven't seen "The Cabin In The Woods." Seriously, because you might like it, and I'd hate to ruin anything.
///////BEGIN MASSIVE SPOILERS\\\\\\\\
What it all boils down to, when I have to talk about my real impressions of the movie, was that the story made absolutely no sense to me. At all.
So you've got this group of vaguely defined, government programs around the world that set up and run these sacrifices to these Eldrich Horrors from beyond Space and Time (oh, just call it Cthulhu). My question is: "Why do these Gods care about slasher movie cliches?"
Why the five stereotypes? Why the mythical beasts and movie monster tropes? Why do those suddenly exist in the real world? Are they just there now? Are they created by man? Or the Gods? Why would the Gods know about movie monsters? They watch a lot of HBO, do they? Did they make them as a favor to us and say "Here, use these for our amusement?" Did they have horror movies back before the Dawn of Time? Are the Gods big fans of those? Or are they implying that the slasher movie naturally evolved from these real life TOP SECRET nobody knows about programs? Why in Japan is there the "Scary undead kid with long hair in her eyes" monster? Was that ancient evil always around, but nobody ever knew about it until Japan started making horror movies in the 2000s?
"And lo! Great Cthulhu raised his blasphemous bulk from the black ocean waters and declared Rob Zombie's "Halloween" series to be totally lame."
And you can't tell me that it's just something that mankind did to appease these Gods, because that seems awfully specific to me. It's remarked that the Gods "want them to suffer." Okay. Fine. Take them out to a woodshed and take a blowtorch to them starting from the bottom up. That seems like an adequate amount of suffering to me.
But oh no, the Gods are PICKY about these things. No, the sacrifices have to die in a specific order, according to these human-based horror movie cliches, and if you mess it up, you're boned and the Earth is doomed.
"HAHAHA. HAHAHAHAHA. HA! It's funny because it's referencing other movies. Brilliant.
And once again I ask "WHY?" What possible reason is there for any of that? I'm just saying that it seems like an absurd amount of work to:
1) Set up a space-age technology level underground fortress,
2) Break all known laws of science and medicine to create these inhuman abominations from Hell
3) Capture them
4) Store them
5) Create a Star Trek level force field around this wooded area
6) Theatrically stage an entire "Truman Show" style ruse
7) Abduct and murder five innocent people with movie monsters that are now real somehow
8) Cover THAT up without being found out and
9) Do that EVERY YEAR
Unless that was specifically mandated by the Gods, I would think they would probably stick with the blowtorch in the woodshed.
Of course we all know the reason. It's so directer/co-writer Drew Goddard and Joss Whedon can do Whedon's patented same old "Oh look at me I'm EVER so clever and cheeky" self-referential writing he does in everything he's involved in. And once again, here's where I look like the jerk because I didn't like Lord Whedon's stuff, but there it is. I don't like it, I'm calling BS on it, and I stand by that.
And nowhere is this cheekiness more self-evident than the very end of the movie. I was mostly confused throughout most of "The Cabin In The Woods," but at the end I flat out got mad. The fact that the entirety of mankind is doomed to a horrible, grisly fate just because some baked out of his mind, acid dropping, boneheaded conspiracy nut felt like causally dismissing the human race as "having had a good run" was infuriating to me. And what's worse is that it's honestly really out of character for him in the first place, and especially for the Virgin, who just casually goes along with the "let the Dark Gods destroy us all" plan with little argument.
It's like every Linkin Park song ever written manifested itself into a walking, talking, smoking biped and was finally given The History Eraser Button from "Ren & Stimpy." Of course he's going to be selfish and terrible and stupid and push it because nobody understands him, and it's the only way The Man is going to get off his back. THIS little turd is what finally does us in?!
Somehow...I always knew that guy would be the end of me.
Oh but it's ok that humanity is destroyed. As long as you got to make a statement, that's cool. Asshole.
On the plus side, she's really cute.
///////////END MASSIVE SPOILERS\\\\\\\\\\\\\\
THE BOTTOM LINE - Even though I've bitched about "The Cabin In The Woods" a lot, I'm guessing many people might get a charge out of it, and Whedonites will eat this up with a spoon. Personally I wasn't too impressed with it, and found it to be, like most of the things Whedon writes, full of itself and trying way too hard to be way too clever. That being said, I am actually suggesting you watch this movie on the basis of having a crazy story told in a competent manner. Recommended. (Then come back and read the Massive Spoiler section to see why it's stupid.)
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