For the
sake of not having to write the same intro a million
different ways throughout the rest of time, just know that
this column avoids the overly long and sometimes dull
process of full film reviews and instead opts to break
things down based on what I thought going in, what happened
while I was there and what I learned at the end of it all.
Thanks for reading!
The
Breakdown - The Cabin In The Woods
The Impression:
This film has garnered so much hype for so many different
reasons that when I think of it my stomach bulges with
nerdish glee. Thank you Lionsgate for finally pulling this
down from the shelves and dusting it off. I imagine you’re
going to have a fairly massive horror hit on your hands any
minute now.
The Reality:
It’s hard to say anything critical about a film like this in
the amount of words I usually a lot for these speed-dating
type reviews as this is the type of the film that the less
you know going in to it the better it’s going to play. I’ll
let on to this, take the whole teens get horny in the woods
trope that’s been played out on every fucking horror locale
in the woods and turn it, and every other horror film you’ve
ever seen, right on its head. That’s what this movie does.
And if it did so with even an ounce of the filmmaking talent
lent to it by Whedon and Goddard, this would be a stellar
film, but it feels like both came to the project with their
A-game guns fully loaded and the film they’ve wrangled is
goddamn great from minute one. Not only does it play with
the tropes of horror filmdom in a way that opens the
floodgates for intellectual discussions of the film, but
they have a great time doing so. It’s gory, it’s hilarious,
there’s nudity - it pretty much hammers home all of the
standard cornerstones you need for a kids get horny in the
woods and then die film, but in a way you’ll never see
coming. Honestly, I sat in my seat for the first forty
minutes of this fantastic film and had no real idea of what
was going to happen. It was uncomfortable almost, as it’s so
rare that movies do this anymore and even rarer that I give
them the chance. But The Cabin In The Woods keeps you
guessing in terms of plot twists and character development
until the very, very end.
The Lesson:
Hype does work out sometimes.
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