Review by Stephanie Scaife
Warning: Contains moderate spoilers.
Admittedly I was a bit late to the game when it came to The Cabin in the Woods. I’d been intrigued by the posters I’d seen and had heard rumblings of greatness, not least from Britt Hayes who provided a glowing review after the SXSW screening earlier this year (read that here). But then that thing happened where something becomes so overhyped that I just became… sort of over it. Like when everyone was reading The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, it took me over a year to pick up a copy purely because I was so sick of seeing everyone else read it and then tell me how good it was. But then I found myself stuck for ideas of how to amuse myself on a grey and rainy Scottish Spring day whilst visiting my grandmother, so I suggested going to the cinema. She wanted to see Salmon Fishing in the Yemen, I wanted to see Lockout but somehow the compromise ended up being The Cabin in the Woods.
Luckily I’d managed to avoid any of the major plot spoilers, and the film definitely works better if you go in blind so I won’t spoil the ending, but as it’s been out for a few weeks now I think it’s safe to assume that we all know the basics. Essentially The Cabin in the Woods is a smart ass play on the conventions of the horror genre, and it works to a certain extent. But it definitely thinks it’s cleverer than it actually is and it will only really play to a fanboy audience who already know the ins and outs of the genre, meaning that unfortunately much is likely to be lost on your average cinemagoer who will not understand the in-jokes and knowing nods and winks.
The film starts with Sitterson (Richard Jenkins) and Hadley (Bradley Whitford), two white collar workers shooting the shit by the coffee machine. But what do they do and where do they work? That is the question that is gradually revealed throughout the course of the movie. We then cut to an altogether more familiar opening where we see our five protagonists, all of whom fit their designated stereotype; we have the jock Curt (Chris Hemsworth), his slutty girlfriend Jules (Anna Hutchison), the girl-next-door Dana (Kristen Connolly), the smart sensitive Holden (Jesse Williams) and finally our stoner comedy relief in the form of Marty (Fran Kranz in a scene stealing role). They are setting off on a weekend getaway to stay at Curt’s cousin’s cabin in the woods, but what’s that? There’s a man on the roof of the apartment monitoring their every move and he’s reporting in to none other than Sitterson and Hadley, the duo we were introduced to at the very beginning. Less than 5 minutes in and we already know that something is amiss here. This isn’t your typical slasher film. Even the creepy, drooling redneck at the gas station they pass through is in on it.
Basically this is kind of like Marc Evans’s My Little Eye (underappreciated, in my opinion) meets The Truman Show with a slight hint of Funny Games thrown in for good measure, and the audience is in on it right from the start. The question is; how long will it take our protagonists to cotton on? Sitterson and Hadley are the puppeteers in this scenario and although the free will of the characters comes into play during certain key moments, as soon as things don’t go to plan our guys step in to ensure that the criteria is met (pheromone infused mist to ensure a sex scene, for example). The idea is that the characters are being manipulated into acting in a certain way to meet the audience expectations, it’s clever and it toys with the audience’s knowledge of the genre and raises those all-important questions about why we choose to watch horror films and violence on screen for entertainment. Although it doesn’t so much dwell on the question so much as have fun playing with the answers.
So why is all of this happening? I won’t spoil it for those not in the know, but for me the answer we’re given wasn’t really the payoff I’d wanted or expected. Maybe it just comes down to personal taste, but I’d wanted something altogether more cynical and what I got was something that was actually just sort of silly. It felt to me like Goddard and Whedon had started out with something pretty interesting but had simply made it all up as they went along, going along with every whim, which is rewarding in the sense that the film is amusing; they clearly understand the genre and had a whole lot of fun messing around with it. But the end result contains some rather gaping plot holes and an unsatisfactory and somewhat flimsy explanation that definitely felt sort of thrown together and tacked on almost as an afterthought. It also seemed to me that they were so caught up in cramming as much in as possible that they plain forgot to make anything about the film even remotely scary.
Had my expectations not been so high then perhaps I wouldn’t have dwelt so much on the shortcomings of the film, because – don’t get me wrong – I did enjoy it, and it always makes a nice change to see a horror film that isn’t a remake, terribly predictable or just plain awful. As a fan of the genre I always appreciate the effort to do something different (and the death-by-unicorn scene was not something I could ever have predicted!) Alas, despite some clever moments, snappy dialogue and a few decent set pieces I just didn’t think Cabin in the Woods entirely lived up to the hype. It’s a solid effort that may improve after multiple viewings but for now I’m going to say that for me it was a straight up middle of the road 3 star movie. The verdict of my 71 year old grandmother however, “It was the stupidest and goriest film I’ve ever seen”. I probably should’ve taken her to see Salmon Fishing in the Yemen after all…