The Cabin In the Woods made quite a splash at last month’s South by Southwest Film Festival, and it’s easy to see why. The movie, which reportedly had been languishing unseen for more than two years before Lionsgate rescued it, seems to have been designed for auditoriums full of giddy fanboys who enjoy watching a director subvert a genre and then put pedal to the metal with an all-out-assault on Hollywood’s attraction to effects-laden finales. If Cabin in the Woods can be seen with the right kind of audience, it might provide a contagious sort of fun.

Five friends enter... how many will leave?
This time, though, I find myself in disagreement with my film-geek friends. I responded to Cabin in the Woods without either fear or laughter, even as director Drew Goddard — who wrote the movie Cloverfield — knowingly played with all manner of horror cliches, the most prominent of them involving a stereotypical group of college students who head off to an isolated forest cabin for a weekend of fun.
Of course, we know trouble will follow. Our hapless students will soon encounter the expected horrors, but — and here’s the movie’s gimmick — we also learn that the environment in which these kids find themselves is being manipulated by cynical corporate types who operate out of a high-tech control room and make bets on what’s likely to transpire.
Goddard, who co-wrote the screenplay with Joss Whedon, introduces us to a prototypically standard group of movie kids: a handsome jock (Chris Hemsworth), a slutty girl (Anna Hutchison) and a pot-smoking druggie (Fran Kranz). You don’t need to know the rest of the characters because, by the very nature of Goddard’s semi-playful enterprise, they’re not really worth knowing. They’re types that more often than not are fed into big-screen slaughter machines. Oh, all right, the other two kids are played by Jesse Williams and Kristen Connolly.
Richard Jenkins and Bradley Whitford play the main techies in the control room. This cynical duo manipulates just about everything that happens in and around the cabin through some sort of unexplained machinations involving lots of electronics. Need a bit of libidinous stimulation? Release the pheromone mist.
It’s impossible not to compare these two wise-cracking techies to movie directors who pull the levers that guide audiences through familiar funhouses of horror in which characters act stupidly (heading alone into darkened basements) or fight off relentless monsters (indefatigable redneck zombies).
Cabin in the Woods even boasts a far-fetched explanation for everything we’ve seen. I suppose we need this explanation because Cabin’s major intrigue revolves around one question: Why are Jenkins and Whitford, as characters who appear to be working for a large company, carrying out this cruel scheme.
It’s not possible to tell more without including a ton of spoilers. Know, though, that some viewers will regard the movie’s finale as surprising and enjoyably preposterous.
I found it mostly preposterous without much amusement. Cabin in the Woods may have wanted to say something smart about horror movies that too often display a strained, synthetic quality and no real convictions. But what convictions does Cabin have? Here’s the problem: If you spend a whole movie subverting a genre, you run the risk of being left with nothing to stand on but air.
This “Cabin” is built from a certain kind of smart-alecky cleverness about movies and not much else.
I went in knowing what he'd done and I enjoyed maybe, the first 90% of the movie. It was quirky and it was funny. I felt the nudity was completely uncalled for though. Not that it hurt prude sensibilities, but because it removed the playfulness of the film.
Anyway, the ending was hackneyed and preachy. The reviewer is hard on the movie as a whole, but the last two minutes of the film deserve as much disgust as they can conjure up. It was just... boring. Smarmy and unnecessary. April 16, 2012 reply
Sadly, for Whedon and Goddard, all the movie's attempts at so-called horror, comedy, and satire are undercut by the heavy-handed artifice that the whole movie rests on.
It's almost like the filmmakers are shouting at the audience and critics to praise the gimmicky cleverness they've conceived. Yet, ten minutes into the movie, once the jig is up, who really cares what happens to these characters and why?
What you're left with is a mild interest in what else lies behind the curtain. Along the way to this final reveal--a laughable absurdity at best--the movie tumbles into a schlocky mess with no suspense, thrills, or interesting character developments.
The movie's few redeeming qualities are the sometimes funny wisecracks uttered by the pothead character, and some creative uses of movie monster bloodshed that would make a horror film archivist proud. Otherwise, "A Cabin in the Woods" mixes a genre-bending cocktail of two parts overdone satire, one part pseudo-horror, and one part smart alecky humor. The result: an impotent potable--and, unfortunately for the audience, no buzz.
July 12, 2012 reply
And that "airy" feeling you're referencing? It may not be due to a lack of intrinsic meaning but instead may be the vertigo that unadulterated joy can bring. April 16, 2012 reply
SPOILERS HERE!!! YOU ARE WARNED!!!
The last couple of minutes really didn't make any sense at all. Why did that famous lady (who I won't name) suddenly appear in the sacrifice chamber? Was she hiding there? Why couldn't her death count as the fool, since she was foolish enough to tangle with the kids?
But a better question is this: why did the "god" under the cabin emerge to destroy the world when they failed, but in the other nations (Japan, for example) nothing bad happened when they failed? Is there only one "god" down there, and he happened to be under the cabin in the U.S. when they failed? Or are there multiple "gods" and they call each other on the phone to keep each other up to date on the success/failure rate?
And in a side note, how did the zombie girl with one arm get down in the underground complex? Didn't stoner boy and the girl take the elevator that was in the grave? Did she push a button and wait for a new elevator?
It was really a lame ending. April 16, 2012 reply
April 20, 2012 reply
Is anybody else tired of these professional couch potatoes telling the rest of us how we need to find meaning in something in order to be entertained? Or that we haven't got a shred of taste unless we think Casablanca or Gone With the Wind are the greatest films of all time?
I sometimes get the sense that film critics filter their reviews specifically to impress upon other film critics how developed their critique palate is. For example:
Critic A: "What do you think is the greatest Horror film ever made?"
Critic B: "Well... I'd have to say Nosferatu. It's style was so new and shocking and people had never seen anything like it before. I just couldn't give it any other place except #1"
Critic A: "Ooooh I disagree. While Nosferatu is definitely a classic for all of the reasons you've just mentioned I have to say The Exorcist is the best. Not because it's terribly scary or well made but rather because of how shocked people were when it came out in the 1970's. I mean honestly... who could ever imagine such a good little girl screaming such foul words?!"
If you think I'm wrong go watch The Tree of Life... It got great reviews.
April 17, 2012 reply
The whole ancient evil gods plot was just silly but my two biggest problems with this movie were:
* There was not a single character in this movie to care about. I realize the point was to make them all SEEM like cliches but they were all too boring to be cliche. In one scene, I remember a character making a statement about the supposedly dumb jock being really smart......uhm...."show, don't tell".
*Too much exposition. Good Lord! Do you have to explain every little thing? Who CARES why characters in a horror movie have to be butchered? Just give us a heroic character to relate to, a villain to fear and hate, and a bunch of suspense and gore. But stop trying to make smart American Horror movies that only prove how idiotic our society has become.
April 19, 2012 reply
I'm shocked this movie received such great reviews but everyone is entitled to their opinion. I hated it and, as a result, I'm less likely to trust movie reviewers. Any movie with a giant snake in it automatically rates a C-. April 21, 2012 reply
WTF?
Sorry. It was unique and creative but I just didn't think it was that great a movie, plain and simple. I want my 90 minutes and $6.99 back....
I agree with this review whole heatedly. October 5, 2012 reply