The Cabin in the Woods

“That’s not fair! I had zombies too!”
“Yes, you had ‘Zombies.’ But this is ‘Zombie Redneck Torture Family.’ Entirely separate thing. It’s like the difference between an elephant and an elephant seal.” Aw, who doesn’t know the pain of losing the lottery to guess which unspeakable disaster horny college kids unwittingly unleash to bring about their own demise?

The Cabin in the Woods is a refreshing perspective on the standard slasher pic. Yes, there are standard horror elements: oversexed college kids, remote location, weapon brandishing zombies, yadda, yadda , yadda. And then there’s the control room. Right. Wait? Control room? Yes. Control room. This particular gore-fest has been engineered by people in neckties and lab coats.

As per cliché, there is a God-fearing, doom-saying codger (Tim De Zarn) warning the kids not to go to The Cabin in the Woods. Hearing the requisite foreboding is par-for-the-course in a teen slasher pic. Hearing this curmudgeon call home base, continue his portential gobbledy-gook, and then say with an offended tone, “am I on speaker phone?” Well, that stuff is worth the price of admission alone. Seriously.

So yeah, a bunch of kids go to a remote cabin to have sex for a weekend. The kids are fairly nondescript, but I recognized Chris Hemsworth because he’s Thor. Little do the over-sexed ex-teens know the trip and all the circumstances have been carefully engineered to bring about death. During the evening, a trap door pops open as if by magic. Curiosity draws our future corpses into a cellar that is literally a treasure trove of flea market items each carefully triggered to summon a unique supernatural merchant of death. Decisions, decisions …

There are really two pics here, one about the kids and another about the office where Sitterson (Richard Jenkins) and Hadley (Bradley Whitford) among others sit back and play God. And it is playing God, isn’t it? If you believe in The Almighty, then you probably agree that He/She does little more from our perspective than set the board up; genetic disease aside, you by-and-large create the circumstances by which you die. These guys just need a resolution sooner than later.

This is what makes The Cabin in the Woods a special horror film. Myself? I’m never going to love the genre. I don’t need to see a bear-trap mace wielding hillbilly zombie to get a rise. But the script as presented was much less about the gory death of horny teens as about how and why horny teens need to be gored; that makes the product worth exploring.

Rated R, 95 Minutes
D: Drew Goddard
W: Joss Whedon, Drew Goddard
Genre: Puppetmaster
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: People who find formula horror tiresome
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: People who simply don’t care about horror one way or another