Weekend Muvie Revue

The Cabin in the Woods

Fear has been scientifically proven to make you horny.  That’s why horror movies are still around, despite being the absolute worst.  Now that we’ve solved that riddle it’s still worth mentioning that they don’t have to be terrible.  All you have to do is treat them like real movies, give a shit, and be good at what you do.  Fortunately, that persons exists.  Even better for us, his name is Joss Whedon.  The guy made one of the best shows ever about space cowboys.  I’ll pretty much be on board with everything he does forever.

I went into Cabin in the Woods expecting a Joss Whedon story.  And it totally is.  There’s strong female characters, tons of death, intense drama mixed with lighter comedic moments.  But this where I stop fellating Whedon, because this movie was still pretty bad.  All of those great Whedon-y things are in it, they’re just not in it very much.  There are scenes that made me laugh and there were scenes I thought were badass but as much as all the ‘big’ Whedon moments are there, the small things are all missing.  When he starts killing off the characters like crazy, you don’t care as much because all the little things that made you like them in the first place weren’t there.  All the subtlety is gone.  It’s like listening to someone tell a story over the phone, and you can only hear the parts where they’re talking too loud.

People are going crazy over this movie right now, both critics and regular fellas.  I totally get why they are – I just don’t feel the same way.  I think people who are fans of Whedon will see his touch on this and go crazy, because it’s Whedon.  And I think other people will just be so happy they watched a horror movie where anything different happened that they’ll be willing to look over a lot of flaws.  For Whedon fans, just know that I don’t consider this to be on par with his other work.  For everyone else, this movie has the same problem so many other meta films have.  It tries to parody something or point out how ridiculous it is while doing that actual thing.  You’re saying how ridiculous the ‘stereotyped teenagers fuck in a cabin before monsters kill them’ format is by showing us that format.  And that’s great, but no matter how far back you pull the curtain we’re still watching stereotyped teenagers fucking in a cabin before monsters kill them.  The only difference is that now the director is tapping me on the shoulder the whole time going ‘See? See how dumb this is? We sure showed you!’

Another problem with being meta is that everything is meta now.  When you show us kids in a cabin, we expect for it to be part of a crazy, diabolical scheme that somehow encompasses every horror movie ever.  Stop fucking winking at things, Hollywood.  Every story ever has already been told.  And now all the stories about how all those stories have been told have been told.  We’re going to have to get to a point where we can acknowledge that and get on with our business or, alternatively, just keeping shoving everything we ever do up its own ass while we smirk at how clever we are.

I wanted to like Cabin in the Woods.  I’m not revenge fucking it, I just don’t think it turned out to be very good.   Even geniuses make missteps now and then and on this one, Whedon stumbled.  Or maybe he didn’t.  Maybe Drew Goddard just didn’t nail the beats like he should have.  This is the first movie he’s ever directed, after all.  Movies are way too complex of a process to ever pin on just one person.  Whatever the reason was, it left this movie missing something.  But by all means, check it out for yourselves.  I know a ton of people who would love this movie and most of them write for this website.  I’d rather just wait for whatever the next Whedon movie that comes out is.

Verdict:

**(out of ****)

 

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