Horror films have rarely
deviated from the set formula: Young people are the stars. They are always
woefully ignorant about dark places and creepy staircases. Sure enough, they
begin to die in gruesome ways. A hero emerges. Someone is thought to be dead
that isn’t; sometimes this may include the monster or killer. Wiggle room for a
sequel is always left open. On and on into infinity.
This film veers very little from this formula, but it does so willfully acknowledging its own plot. It’s
winking at us, but to what end? (By the way, I refuse to go spoiler-free on
this one. The studios demand it, but I’m tired of having to restrict my opinion
just so they can control the debate about their film’s merits. So, if you don’t
want smallish spoilers stop reading.)
A group of college
students set out to visit a remote cabin for the weekend. They bring their beer
and pot and while they chug that RV through the wilderness, an elaborate
concoction awaits them at this cabin. We see the cabin’s workers, blue-collar
types who run the behind-the-scenes magic: electricians who control the grid,
mechanical engineers who manipulate the traps, chemists who administer toxins
and tranquilizers, and then the control room operators (Richard Jenkins is one
of them), the directors of this macabre fright fest. They run the cabin’s HOA
violations from within a bunker located deep beneath the top soil. The last
time this crew of special effects artists put this many torture devices into
one cabin it was called Star Wars Episode
I.
Once the victims arrive,
the cabin is turned against them: lighting is controlled, pheromones are blown in to put everyone in the mood, alcohol is spiked, trapdoors are set to pop open. The whole point is to guide them into the basement so they can unknowingly choose their fate from an archive of horror trinkets. For example, a music box might unleash a killer ballerina, whereas a puzzle-like sphere will unleash the carpentry victim from that Hellraiser series. At one point, all the workers are taking bets
on what blood-thirsty murder monster the vacationers will unleash. One man has
all his money on a rarely used mermaid beast. Up until this point I though the
cabin, a mechanical puzzle in the style of maybe Cube (a much better movie, by the way), would be the sole murder
weapon. Not so. The inclusion of supernatural elements was unexpected and they serve
as the pivot point to Cabin in the Woods
darker secrets.
So anyway, the bodies
start piling up. Because of miniscule variables in configurations in the cabin,
the killers turn out to be inbred backwoods zombies, but the implication is
that there is a more malevolent force controlling them, more devious than even
the control workers in the bunker. If only someone could get down into that
control room and then beyond that! Well, fear not, someone
does get down there and the payoff isn’t really worth it. Before that, though, there is
a rather noteworthy payoff sequence where we meet all the monsters that could
have been summoned on the cabin, like an all-star lineup of villains — a Monster
Mash, if you will.
I will let you discover
some of the more diabolical plot points, but know that the force at work here
has demanded the cabin’s creation and implementation on attractive young people
as some kind of sacrificial entertainment. Yes folks, the horror machine
requires horror clichés to keep it running. Picture an elaborate machine that
spits out a quarter when you put a quarter in it. I give you Cabin in the Woods.
My first question is this:
If a force were powerful enough that it could create something as complex as this
cabin for its amusement, why would it care about horror clichés like bare
breasts, virgins and torture porn? Is the force a 14-year-old boy? And why does
it get a rush out of horror movie staples and not, say, Greek tragedies or
monster trucks or pole vaulting? Oh, I get it, because horror movies command
big box office numbers.
Is Cabin in the Woods a bad movie? No, in fact it’s above average when
it comes to horror movies. But it pretends it’s grandiose and abstract when in
reality it is everything that horror has already been. This is not the
reinvention of the horror genre. It’s a rehash turned inside-out. It’s brave
and bizarre, but it’s not the rebirth of horror.
