"The Cabin in the Woods"

Like we talked about yesterday, there have been a lot of cabin in the woods horror movies, but none of them accomplish what "The Cabin in the Woods" (2012) is able to do. Much like when we discussed "Behind the Mask" a couple weeks ago, this is able to take stereotypes and cliches, and make them mean something completely new. After seeing this, it made "Cabin Fever" mean something a bit more than what Eli Roth had intended.

Five college friends go to a cabin in the woods the unplug for a few days - Dana, Jules, Marty, Holden, and Curt. While staying in the cabin, things start going wrong when they accidentally summon a "Zombie Redneck Torture Family" known as the Buckner Family after finding a very large collection of strange objects in the basement. Little do they know that their entire trip is part of a ritual performed to keep the Ancient Ones at bay. If the ritual is not completed, the Ancient Ones rise again and will lay waste to all civilization. The ritual is being run by an ancient cult whose duty it is to see to the fulfillment of the ritual. The cult has facilities similar to the cabin all over the world, using each of nation's typical horror cliches as their facility. And the cult isn't candles and robes - they're white collar workers in dress shirts with pocket protectors and scientists in lab coats. They're presented like a business. A business that has been completely desensitized to the murder and violence necessary to keep the Ancient Ones "Downstairs". They are only known as The Organization. 

Each of the five main characters is a trope common in horror movies, though they don't start off that way. Unbeknownst to them, the Organization has been pumping pheromones and other gases into their air as a way of completing objectives. For instance Curt is a shown early in the movie as being intelligent. But the pheromones have turned him into The Athlete. Marty is The Fool. Jules is the Whore. Holden is the Scholar. And Dana? Dana is the Virgin. Yep, even though one of the reasons they go on the trip to begin with is because she had sex with one of her professors and he broke up with her via email. 

I could go on for hours about this movie. It's fantastic. There is so much depth. Not just what we're given, but what we're not given. Information in the background, or piecing together one-liners here or there. The wiki page for the movie has collected all this info, and is worth perusing a little bit if you're into this movie. It helps to explain what all the items in the basement are, and helps to identify all the monsters seen who were released during The Purge. 

Richard Jenkins' Sitterson explaining to Rukiya Bernard's Labcoat Girl why she did not win with just "zombies". The Whiteboard is full of horror tropes, cliches, and sub-genres. 

If you haven't seen this movie, please go watch it as soon as possible. It was co-written by Joss Whedon ("Buffy" and "Avengers" fame), co-written and directed by Drew Goddard (Netflix "Daredevil" fame), and a whole slew of actors and actresses who have worked with Whedon in many past endeavors. What I'm saying is there is a pedigree here, and it knows how to handle what it's trying to do. Except it's not "trying to do", because it successfully accomplishes everything it tries. This movie is straight entertaining, with the comedy brought mostly from Richard Jenkins and Bradley Whitford in their super-hilarious roles as the management in charge of the American Ritual. 

No awful sequels here (finally). Hopefully we don't get one, because I think it would only ruin everything this movie gives us. Whedon sucks at sequels anyways. There was a novelization I intend on picking up at some point, because we get appearances by other monsters like Kevin, and a few other things are explained.