92% The Cabin in the Woods

The Cabin in the Woods has been building an avalanche of buzz in the time it's been sitting on the shelf. Originally filmed in 2009, the horror comedy from Buffy the Vampire Slayer creative heavyweights Drew Goddard and Joss Whedon has been patiently waiting to unleash its wicked Jack-in-the-box of surprises. Directed by Goddard, and written by Whedon and Goddard, The Cabin in the Woods is a brash enterprise, a blast of entertainment and a breath of fresh air in a genre that typically teeters into self-parody. If you haven't seen the movie yet and have a strong, or even curious, desire to do so, then stop reading. Go in as blind and unspoiled as possible. Then you can come back and read my witty words. It's okay. I won't take offense. In the meantime, I'll keep myself busy. Back? Good, let's get started then. You know the setup. A group of dumb teenagers spend a weekend at a friend's cabin in the middle of nowhere. There's the jock (Chris Hemsworth), the slutty girl (Anna Hutchison), the stoner (Fran Kranz), the bookish one (Jesse Williams), and the mousy girl-next-door virginal type (Kristen Connolly). There's the scary old guy at the gas station, there's the promise of debauchery and sweet oblivion. But we're not the only ones watching the gang. A group of lab techs, led by Hadley (Bradley Whitford) and Sitterson (Richard Jenkins), is watching their every move. They control the cabin and its surroundings and are manipulating events to lead to slaughter. But why are they going to all this trouble? That's just the tip of the iceberg here. The macabre sense of humor is what will immediately separate Cabin in the Woods from its blood-and-guts brethren. The sharp dialogue is routinely laugh-out-loud funny, absurd in the right parts. Whitford's downbeat reaction during a joyous moment of celebration had me howling. The movie is so smart, sometimes too smart for its own good. If you're going to level one major charge against the movie, it's that it isn't really ever scary. Oh sure it has some stuff that should be scary given the particulars, and its 31 flavors of horror should find something that tingles everyone's spine on some level. But this is much more of a deconstruction of the horror genre and its audience than an actual horror movie. Whedon and Goddard undercut their horror almost at every turn, settling for the ironic laugh or satirical tweak and repeatedly cutting back to the lab guys to provide a few good laughs and commentary (Jenkins has a terrific foul-mouth rant aimed at children that left me doubled over in laughter). Do not be mistaken; the lab stuff is easily the best part of the movie. Upon my second viewing, I found myself growing weary with the teens-in-a-cabin stuff and anxiously waiting our next detour into the weird and wonderful lab. The duo of Whitford (TV's The West Wing) and Jenkins (Friends with Benefits) makes for some terrific and biting middle management corporate satire, as well as satirizing the jaded, bloodthirsty audience of slasher movies. You can tell that Whedon and Goddard love horror movies and are frustrated with the nihilistic rut the genre has found itself mired in. And as a deconstructive exercise, Cabin in the Woods is first-class. Roger Ebert succinctly called the movie a "fanboy final exam." It can be a tad clinical at times, failing to give us any true attachment to the characters even in an ironic sense, but when a movie I this fun, this wild, and this clever with its deconstruction of genre, I concede the point of having to root for somebody. The characters break the stereotypical mold; the jock is on academic scholarship, the smart guy happens to also be a hunky jock, the slut isn't really slutty, the virgin isn't squeaky-clean, and the stoner is the smartest guy in the group, aided by his cannabis (As one character later reasons, "We work with what we got"). He's the only one who seems to be able to notice the strange manipulations at work. Once you dig into it, the very nature of how and why we watch horror is analyzed by Cabin in the Woods (get ready for some voyeurism parallels). The nature of fear and sacrifice is given some thought, though this stuff gets a bit lost in the madhouse of a final act. The movie becomes a funhouse of horrors and the frenetic carnage and chaos elevates the energy level. I cannot think of a movie that ended in such a whirling dervish of excitement and deep, demented satisfaction. This is one movie that doesn't just end with a bang; it ends with every bang you can think of. Horror fans are going to be hopping out of the theaters, foaming at the mouth, desperate to tell every one of their friends what they just witnessed. I wish several of my friends would hurry up and see Cabin in the Woods so I had somebody to talk about its many pleasures, thrills, and surprises with. The movie has several terrific payoffs. This is the most fun I've had with a horror movie since 2003's Cabin Fever. Must be something about cabins that brings out the meta-ness. Considering this was on the shelf for over two years while MGM worked out its bankruptcy dealings, it's fun to see how fate has been to this lot of actors. The biggest name has got to be Hemsworth, better known as the flaxen, hammer-wielding God of Thunder Thor in the Marvel movies, and Whedon's upcoming Avengers ensemble. He's rather enjoyable onscreen and his hero moment is one that will definitely be a talking point. The two standouts from the cast, other than Jenkins and Whitford of course, are Connolly ("iGirl" on the Web series, iChannel) as the nubile Final Girl and Kranz (TV's Dollhouse) as the clever pothead. Connolly has got a great face for movies, looking like the younger sister of Ellie Kemper (TV's The Office) or Jayma Mays (The Smurfs), and I'm always a sucker for a redhead. Kranz is so good with the comedy that you may fail to notice all the work he's actually putting into his role, which quickly becomes the audience's voice of reason. But the strangest quirk for a movie knotted with them comes to the casting of its resident "slut" played by Hutchison. The woman has a sultry side that comes through without going overboard into parody. Scanning through her resume, I see that Hutchison portrayed the Yellow Power Ranger (Lilly) for 32 episodes in Power Rangers: Jungle Fury. Now here's where things get interesting. Being the movie aficionado that I am, I recognize that Cabin Fever also had an actress, Cerina Vincent, who portrayed the Yellow Power Ranger (Maya) for 45 episodes in Power Rangers: Lost Galaxy. Here's where it gets even weirder. Both Hutchison and Vincent are the only cast members in their movies to go nude in their respective films. So two actresses, both different versions of the Yellow Power Ranger, both get naked and star in horror genre deconstructive movies with "cabin" in the title! Is this one of the Mayan signs? Does it say something that the yellow ranger appears to be the most comfortable with nudity? Should I contact Dan Brown? This may be the greatest and most obscure observation I've ever made. Of course there are so many fun surprises that it puts me in a bit of a critical bind. I don't want to go into too much detail because that would spoil the fun, though rest assured that The Cabin in the Woods does not live or die based upon unknown plot twists. You may think you know given what's already been revealed via the trailers, but really you have no idea how deep this thing goes and to what ends. Unless you just happened to be me, which at last count there was only one of (my evil twin long since slain... or was he?). I say this not as some point of pretentious bragging, but it's because I wrote a horror screenplay a year ago that also satirized the genre tropes (for those few interested, it was called Blood Wake). I won't go into spoiler detail, but both of our bad guys were called into question as being bad, from a greater good standpoint, and the killers had more on their minds than simply punishing dumb, horny teenagers. Well, after watching Cabin in the Woods, I know that screenplay goes back in the shelf now where it will live in eternal slumber thanks to core similarities. But if somebody's got to be wielding the knife, at least it's my man crush Joss Whedon. Nate's Grade: A-

April 16, 2012

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