2 ½ stars (out of four)
Two jocks, a floozy, a stoner and a naive sweetheart walk
into a cabin in the woods. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before.
But maybe you haven’t. The Cabin in the Woods is a horror film that, as its title suggests, takes
on one of the genre’s most elemental formulas. Horny teenagers and deranged
slashers have been sharing campgrounds for decades now but co-writers Joss
Whedon and Drew Goddard (who also directed the film) are interested in
delivering more than your standard bloody, wooded excursion. They seek to turn a
familiar premise – and, with it, just about every other horror movie convention
– on its head and offer up a complete genre deconstruction.
A horror movie’s success often hinges on its ability to
surprise. Audiences demand a sudden scare, an unexpected twist or, sometimes,
considering how formulaic these movies tend to be, the surprise may be as
slight as the order in which the characters are killed.
The Cabin in the Woods
certainly has its share of surprises. The movie toys with our expectations and
subverts them, letting us think we know where it is going, only to yank the rug
out from under its own clichés. This makes for plenty of unexpected moments but
also means the movie too often feels like an exercise in meta cleverness.
Among the doomed kids is David (Chris Hemsworth), a cocky
football player who gets the cabin on loan from his cousin. Joining him for the
weekend are his girlfriend Jules (Anna Hutchison), her best friend Dana (Kristen
Connolly), his teammate Holden (Jesse Williams) and their pothead pal Marty
(Fran Kranz). Each fits a familiar slasher movie archetype, though the movie
hints there may be more to their two-dimensional personalities than we first
expect.
Before we even meet any of the vacationing teens, we are
introduced to two curiously cavalier lab technicians, Richard (the always
wonderful Richard Jenkins) and Steve (Bradley Whitford). They are employees in
an sleek, underground facility that has remote access via video surveillance
and more to the cabin. Of their role in what happens next, I will say no more
except that they are the catalysts of a series of twists that continue to
escalate through the film’s finale.
Perhaps because the scenes with the two lab techs break
fresh, new territory, they are by far more interesting than what is going on in
the cabin. (The witty repartee between Mr. Jenkins and Mr. Whitford helps too.)
The cabin scenes are not without their moments but it’s hard to get too
attached to, or root for, characters that are only stand-ins for
self-referential commentary. Part of what makes trashy horror movies fun is the
way they encourage us to cheer on some characters and wish death for others. The
Cabin in the Woods is too self-aware for
that. As soon as audience sympathies begin to form for a character, attention
is called to that very sympathy, which is of course one of the ways Mr. Whedon
and Mr. Goddard play with the formula, but it also takes the wind out of a few
scenes. The movie wants to keep us at a distance.
In its final third, The Cabin in the Woods becomes an all-out funhouse of a movie and there is
an inspired sequence that is the ultimate horror movie mash-up. It is a scene horror
fans never knew they wanted but, now that it exists, is a must-see if only for
its sheer audacity.
By the end, The Cabin in the Woods gives us plenty to smile at but no real scares or
jolts. That was never its intention though. The movie is a smart critique of
horror films without actually being an entry in the genre, a choice of approach
that is as novel as it is limiting.
- Steve Avigliano, 4/24/12
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