Theatrical release poster art

(18) THE CABIN IN THE WOODS (2012)

“On another level, it’s a serious critique of what we love and what we don’t about horror movies.”

I’m ranking The Cabin in the Woods in top tier, because it is virtually an encyclopedia of horror film genre tropes and references, the latter so congested at times you have to pause or watch frame by frame to get them all (and probably not even then).

It is a horror film that is also meta-horror – a love letter to the genre, or more precisely a love-hate letter to the genre.

“I love being scared. I love that mixture of thrill, of horror, that objectification / identification thing of wanting definitely for the people to be alright but at the same time hoping they’ll go somewhere dark and face something awful. The things that I don’t like are kids acting like idiots, the devolution of the horror movie into torture p0rn and into a long series of sadistic comeuppances.”

That is of course from Joss Whedon as producer and co-writer of the screenplay, the latter with director Drew Goddard as the other co-writer” – and the film is definitely Whedonesque in its troperiffic and reference-heavy quality (rather than the more, ah, negative qualities that might be associated with that term from developments since that film). Indeed, it has distinct similarities with the creation that still is definitive of Whedon – Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season 4 and the Initiative in particular.

“Five friends go to an isolated cabin in the woods for a weekend vacation.”

And that’s pretty much all you’re getting of the plot here, because any more detail spoils the premise of the film. Let’s just say the premise of the film explains why the plots of horror films often seem so contrived in a deconstruction of both the “cabin in the woods” setting and the horror genre.

Film critic Ann Hornaday summed it up nicely:

“A fiendishly clever brand of meta-level genius propels The Cabin in the Woods, a pulpy, deceivingly insightful send-up of horror movies that elicits just as many knowing chuckles as horrified gasps. [It] comes not only to praise the slasher-, zombie- and gore-fests of yore but to critique them, elaborating on their grammatical elements and archetypal figures even while searching for ways to put them to novel use. The danger in such a loftily ironic approach is that everything in the film appears with ready-made quotation marks around it… But by then, the audience will have picked up on the infectiously goofy vibe of an enterprise that, from its first sprightly moments, clearly has no intention of taking itself too seriously”.

RATING: 4 STARS****

A-TIER (TOP TIER)