The Cabin in the Woods (2011)

Role call!

Dumb girl, who is a wuss, but likes to explore dark corners of a haunted place – Present.
Another dumb girl, who is horny most of the time and wears clothes that are scanty enough- Present.
A dumb boy, who is handsome and well built enough to be the alpha male- Present.
Another guy, who talks weird stuff and thus gets all the promo dialogues- Present. 
Yet another guy, who doesn't have any particular traits, but gets to die creatively- Present.

There we have the perfect dumb college group which goes to the woods to spend their weekend, just to be killed one by one. Don’t we just love it? It is like the Bond movies, basic mathematics! You have the formula- blasts, international level oil conspiracies, deceptive sexy ladies and a spy who speaks less and shoots more. They bring it to us every 5 years and we compare it to the one that came before, which had suffered from the exact same fate. It is never as good as the last one. All said and done, we hoot, whistle and jump when every time they repeat that stuff. Some clichés are necessary. Some things should never change. Even if we criticize people for the way they are and nag them to change, when they do change- we miss them for the way they were. Remember when James Bond shed tears in Casino Royale? It broke the fans’ hearts for all the wrong reasons. 

My favorite genre is horror. It’s ironic but I feel comfortable watching horror films. Nothing ever changes. So we can always sit back and wait for our predictions to come right. There is a pattern and we criticize it. We are pretty familiar with the horror house architecture by now. Stupid decisions are taken and we get to shout out loud at the characters. You feel intelligent, as you feel you would do better int terms of a retreat strategy when your bedroom door slams open in the middle of the night. “Let me see what resources I can optimally utilize to beat this intangible spirit which can kill me any minute”.

What I don’t like is when somebody messes with the stereotypes. The Cabin in the Woods is therefore a source of discomfort.  It has everything in the right place before it starts playing with the plot in a different way, playing with the pure idea.

Pornography and voyeurism are uncomfortable topics when we talk about them to the society. But they have a market. What if they are liberalized and further commercialized? What if the human race gives in to the lust? After all there’s money where there is thirst and hunger. But this is not the first movie to tackle this topic. David Cronnenberg made a disturbing thriller back in 1983, called the Videodrome. And I am sure there are a few more.  It is a good idea. It is a horrific idea. Good for a thriller. But wait a minute, what about the dumb youngsters in the forest? What about the cabin in the woods? Hey don’t blame me; I am as confused as the screenplay.

Then there was some talking about mythology, shoved in were various film references (I bet the cabin in the movie is a tip of the hat to Sam Raimi’s cult horror-comedy trilogy- The Evil Dead). At one point of time I even felt like I was watching the demo of a Japanese video game. All of this packed in a glittery blood red cover of modern, comic book style, graphic filmmaking.

It’s been some time since we saw a good horror caper. Gore and sex have adulterated the genre. Clichés are a thing of the past. Now we have everybody trying to revamp the whole genre. The Cabin in the Woods is one such experiment. Sometimes, the inconsistency of 

thought had me distracted. Too many ideas, not even one well exploited.

Imagine this situation. You finally visit your favorite restaurant on a hard-earned weekend. You order your favorite dish. The place is too busy and confused so they get you something else that’s equally tasty. You are too hungry to complain so you let it be and start enjoying the food. You have just gotten accustomed to it, when the waiter, without a warning, takes your plate away and serves you with something else. It is tasty too, but again- not what you ordered. You forgive him yet again and decide to have whatever you can get, fill your stomach and leave. Sadly, the restaurant has different plans it doesn’t stop switching your dishes. It is their idea of new and innovative service. Pissed off, you leave.

It is not a bad movie, but a bad horror movie. Rather, wrongly branded so. But a good thriller? Sure. Comic-book fans would love it too. After all, it is produced by Joss Whedon, the guy behind this year’s massive blockbuster- The Avengers. These guys surely had it in the back of their mind that they were making a movie about horror movies and not a horror movie itself, but that’s the problem- they had it in the back of their mind.

If only it had made me whimper and made my goose-flesh squirm. On the contrary, my geese had popcorn and flapped their wings off indifference.

IMDB Rating: 7.3/10

My Rating: 2.5/5