The Cabin in the Woods

 

"I'm so sorry I almost shot you. I probably wouldn't have."-Dana

"Hey, shh, no. I totally get it. I'm sorry I let you get attacked by a werewolf and then ended the world."--Marty

**½

 

Chock full of spoilers, the cat out of the bag, just spilling the beans.

Unbeknownst to four college kids, heading to a cabin for some kicks and giggles, they are not only being influenced by an unusual corporation assigned the task of making sure they die but in a pattern that will appease an old benefactor. Why is it so important these kids die? It could be the end of the world as we know it if they don’t!

You know that whole kitchen sink method? Where a movie tosses everything at you but the kitchen sink? The Cabin in the Woods even has a unicorn goring a guy! If that doesn’t tell you what you are in for, nothing will. I like the addition of the psycho smiling clown and killers with doll masks. Slasher genre stereotypes along with Lovecraftian Ancient ones together in the same movie…oh, and zombies. A werewolf, a pterodactyl (or maybe it was a giant vampire bat; I know I saw a humongous King Cobra on the rampage laying bloody waste to a black-clad security force), a ballerina whose face is a mouth of teeth, some sort of Cenobite-type of silent ghoul with blades sticking out of parts of his face (he’s holding a spherical device that predicts how you die…), a one-armed, ax-wielding zombie girl who plays a major part in how the world either ends or survives, Sigourney Weaver as “The Director”(yes, that Sigourney Weaver), a ghost that moves about in a sort of “specter cloud”, and an aquatic “merman”, many before being freed were kept in square-cubed holding cells that operate at concealing the “world’s worst nightmares”.

I’ve reached this point as a horror fan to expect the unexpected and the expected. This film delivers in both areas. While the film does parody but also follow slasher convention up until a point, when pothead Marty defies the odds and expectations that usually result in his early demise, this movie goes off into the wildest of tangents imaginable. I just said, “What the bloody hell?!?!” with the unicorn shows up and really the opening scene even before we meet “the virgin, whore, athlete, scholar, and fool” (like board game pieces in a horror film), as the “puppeteers”—hired to satiate, to placate, to satisfy, to hold at bay the Ancient Ones, remaining dormant in whatever dimension, parallel universe, dominion under (inside, wherever) the earth they inhabit—gather collections from their fellow co-workers in the building, bids on how the “game” will go, there’s this side of me that immediately was aware that the movie was already heading off the cliff, into the deep end, the abyss, straight into that place of batshit insane The Evil Dead 2 was gleefully willing to tread…The Cabin in the Woods not only treads at the wicked happy place of batshit insane, but it shucks and jives with a demented smile. When that giant hand explodes from the ground as the fool and virgin make their decision in regards to how “the game ends” I just sat in silence; I asked myself, “What did you just finish?” It’s that kind of experience.