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shadowkatThe following is spoilers. Or basically, I watch Cabin in the Woods, so you don't have to.
Or for those who have seen it and wish to discuss.
Yes, I know..for someone who keeps saying she's not a fan of Joss Whedon, I certainly see and read a lot of the man's works, don't I? There was this blog post that I read online somewhere that stated -- if you want to find your way into a girlgeek's heart, watch everything Joss Whedon has done. Sigh. Too true. We girl-geeks have a weirdly ironic love of Whedon's stories. I've no idea why. Best not to wonder why...just to do or die. I am, as you well know by now, extremely critical of things I love and enjoy. What can I say? It's the car I drive or how I am put together.
The following will compare Cabin with Hunger Games and various other films. Before going into the review, it feels odd to do a meta on it, since the film itself is more a meta than a film or a meta on the horror genre in general.
A quick summary of the plot:
Cabin in the woods doesn't start the way you'd think. The movie poster - which I rather love and is the reason I went to the movie, well that and the fact that it was written by Drew Goddard and Joss Whedon and geeks everywhere have been in a swoon over its release - does sort of give it away, but not quite - the poster is better than the movie. So too is the trailer. Which is annoying. I hate it when that happens.
The credits depict various ancient human sacrifices, proving once again that neither of these guys has spent much time studying mythology or theology for that matter, and great deal more time studying horror tropes. The frustrated mythologist in me was both amused and disgruntled. We start with Egypt, jump to Greeks, then Mayans, the Azetecs...and finally Dante's Hell...all paintings on the walls. Sort of the Western World's take on human sacrifice as translated by the St. James Bible.
It's more complicated than that. Jesus actually was a human sacrifice although not to appease an angry god. Wicca is said to do the human sacrifice - the rite of spring. Where the Mother Goddess devours her lover son. Actually, most religious sacrifices were male, at least in Europe and the desert cities. Osiris, Jesus, Mohammed, The Wicker Man, the son of Mab. Virgins were sacrificed by the Aztecs and Mayans. But it varied. And if you delve into the ritual, study the mythology, and seasonal twists and turns, as well as the context - you'll note that in most cases the sacrifice was willing, much as Jesus is in the Christian mythos. And often, it's a person that is important to the people left alive. Abraham sacrifices Jacob. The Eyptians lose their first born son in the Exodus. But Hollywood and films aren't made by people who studied history, biology, physics, or studied mythology, but people who watched movies, lots of movies - movies that drifted out of oral narratives and urban legends. And they often reference themselves. And in the world of film...
1. There's the murderous gaze of the viewer, and often the male gaze...both go hand in hand
2. The Virgin or last girl Standing - the sin-free protagonist, who suffers, and loses everyone she loves, but defeats the villain
3. The Trickster or Fool who flips the story upside down, and supplies the twist
In horror films, typically, the whore dies first, the trickster next but that's a mislead, he pops up again, the jock, then the intellectual, and finally there's the girl...who you root for. Sometimes she kills the villain, only to be slain in the sequel. (See Friday the 13th or Halloween or Nightmare on Elm Street or the Alien films...by the third or fourth one, Ripley is gone.)
At the end of Cabin, Sigourney Weaver (the original last girl standing from Ridely's Scott's Alien or the original sacrifice in the comedic Ghostbusters), in a nice prim suite, looking like the senior partner at Wolf Ram and Hart (oops wrong series) pops up and explains to our young heroes that the youth are sacrificed. A five person tribute. Whore, Male Hero/Lover, Fool, Intellectual, and finally the Virgin. And my mind immediately drifted to The Hunger Games...where children are sacrificed for the sins of the districts. In that film we also have the hero, the whore, the last girl standing, the intellectual, and the innocent...and the trickster. And in Cabin like Hunger Games, college age students, bright kids, our world's future, or in Japan nine year old little girls are sacrificed to maintain the status quo of bored governmental workers who wank off watching teens have sex in the woods, or bet on which monster they'll unleash.[ETC: the governmental workers or drones in lab coats are clearly meant as stand-in's for the viewers.] Weaver explains they are sacrificed for the good of all. They are tributes. Just as President Snow in the Hunger Games states that executing these tributes is good for all. Or as they state in Battle Royal.
The same conversation happens in The Hunger Games, where Snow explains to the Game Master, Craven, why it makes more sense to play the game. It's more enjoyable to the viewer. The viewer wants the game. Wants to see someone figure out the puzzle and survive against all odds. The murderous gaze of the viewer - first played with by Hitchcock in Rear Window, where the protagonist watches a murder than tries desperately to do something about it.
Later in Peeping Tom - about a murderer who watches and films his victims, the victims he films, he kills - filming them in their final death throes. Until he falls in love with the girl next door...and resists the urge to film her, because if he does, she dies. In Cabin - the government drones get off on watching the kids die, celebrate as the girl is tortured on screen, and root for her to succeed and die at the same time. Much as the Capital viewers root for the tributes to kill each other, and at the same time for the last girl standing to survive. [ETC: In both films they are stand-in's for the viewer, who gets off on the torture and mayhem.] Making me question what it is I like about the genre, and it is that...watching the protagonist, often female, find her way out of the maze, survive. Ripley in Alien and Aliens, Neve Campbell's character in Scream, Jamie Lee Curtis in Halloween...
The difference between Cabin in the Woods and The Hunger Games is Whedon and Goddard hide behind metaphorical monsters, they justify the horror, the rising of the old nightmares,
the torture, through the creation of an evil God or other. They justify the murderous gaze by stating the world would end if it did not exist. While in the Hunger Games, the evil God or other is human beings. The monsters are human. Cato is the threat not the zombies. There is no God, there is no ancient monster. We are the monsters. It's only our faces that stare back at us in the mirror. So in some ways, Cabin is the safer movie, the characters aren't real, this is just a game, a fun romp. A meta on film lore. We are safe inside our classroom watching a film strip on the monitor and taking notes. Detached, like scholars, analyzing wars from the ivory tower of historical perspective. Restructuring it, revising it to fit our own worldview. While Hunger Games, which oddly is PG-14 not R, and slanted towards a much younger audience and a female one to boot, is far less safe and far more direct. It asks...don't we have a third choice? Is violence and aggression the only one? Is heroism really killing monsters? Really?
Cabin in the Woods is directed towards the 18-34, actually I'd say 46 year old, white boy, although it also fits the film geek like myself who has watched and analyzed one too many films in their lifetime. Most of my audience fit into the former demographic. And it does, tongue-in-cheek, poke fun at that audience - the white adolescent man. The villains if there are any, are the white lab guys who are in a way stand-in's for the white male demographic these sort of films appeal to. [ETC: The white male viewers chewing popcorn and laughing at the kids dying on screen.] The film operating as both entertainment and a meta at their expense.
At one point, Franz Katz - the Fool - whose character's name I can't remember and it's not all that important anyhow - states: "I'm in a reality show? My parents are going to be so bummed that I'm a burn-out." [A shout-out to the murderous gaze. We, an unknown audience is watching.]
Like Hunger Games, Cabin pokes the audience for getting off on this sort of thing. Enjoying it. Cabin provides a justification of sorts, pats us all on the back, much like Serenity did, saying - it's okay, you were made this way. It's not your fault. And it's all religion's fault or the evil gods we think are real - anyway. If those gods didn't exist, if we didn't believe them - we'd live in a happy world. (Not true. And somewhat niave. The Hunger Games, a film based on a young adult novel, addresses that world-view head on. Since it is a world without religion, a non-secular existence.)
At the end of the Hunger Games triology...Katniss states a world that sacrifices its children for its continued well-being and privilege, is not a world worth living in. To be fair, Cabin in the Woods states more or less the same thing - a world that sacrifices its young for its continued survival is not a world worth living in. A comment on War, if ever there was one. For who serves in our wars? The young. And who is forever changed or murdered in them? The young.
Both Dana and Franz Katz's character muse...this isn't quite right. They don't fit the archetypes they are assigned. And their choices are removed from them. They are stripped of their identities to play in someone else's game. A commentary if there ever was one on reality shows - where people are stripped of their identities and provided manufactured ones. The Bitch. The Saint. The PRima Donna. The Jock. Labeled, indexed, and neatly catgorized.
Somewhat disturbing this bit here. So because she's only slept with a professor, a much older man...she's still a virgin? Which brings up various points..the established archetypes (even if they aren't real), the male gaze, and the last girl standing. The male gaze is an on-going theme in Whedon's work, starting with Buffy and following through to Dollhouse and finally Cabin in the Woods. The egghead discovers a one way mirror that allows him to watch Dana without her knowledge. He watches her start to undress, and stops her. Then she, is placed in the same position and stops before he takes off his pants, throwing up a blanket. Meanwhile on the white male government workers are disappointed - no boobs, and when they push the whore and jock into an embrace in the woods, they get off on her nakedness and the sex, a whole group stands in rapt attention waiting. A voyeuristic thrill to watch the sex, then to see her decapitated on screen, and dismembered.
Like Hunger Games, Cabin's manipulators push the characters through the paces. It's like any reality show - a bunch of amateur social psychologists manipulate humans to do horrible things and torture them. For an audience with an appetite for it. Asking us, why do we get off on this?
And of course Weaver, of all people, comment - that the girl, the virgin must be last.
The one we have not seen have sex. Who lost her lover. Who lost her friends. Her purity is the last sacrifice...and it comes, when we least expect it. In The Grudge, it comes in Grudge II at the beginning of the film. In Alien, at the end of Alien III, the only one who is never killed may well be original scream queen Jamie Lee Curtis from Halloween.
I wish the film was clearer. It feels as though the writers wanted to throw every horror film essay or meta they'd read into the film, reference them all. Their emphasis the torture porn and reality film genre of the post-modern age, although I saw classics in this mix. Werewolves and a few bats from Pitch Black. It feels as if we are watching a film students or video store geeks meta on horror.
I wish I cared more about the characters. I do sort of root for Dana and Franz, but not completely - the actors win me over but at the end I still don't know their characters and that may well be the point. I'm not supposed to. Their characters are unimportant. They represent archetypes - the nerdy/stoner fool who surprises you (Randy in Scream comes to mind), the last girl standing (I Know what you did last summer, Halloween, Nightmare, etc). It's the theme, the overall metaphor that is important here and all you need for that are archetypes. Which brings me to my main criticism and disappointment in all of Whedon's work post Firefly...somewhere along the line the writer became more interested in writing "meta" then telling "story". As if he's trying to justify the film degree he received? Martin Scorsese has also been doing this lately, annoyingly so, and losing the story as a result - oh film critics and film geeks love him, but the story seems to get lost in all the references. (See the Departed, Shutter Island, for examples). The characters feel more like pawns or puppets, sound-pieces for his message. The director and writer is more interested in blood splatter and cool special effects than in who these people are. People aren't important after all. And it appears to be a trend with other similar genre filmmakers. I'm looking at you, George Lucas, who does much the same thing of late.
There are some wonderful bits and pieces here. A rather hilarious joke about a speaker phone. The harbinger of doom is speaking to Hadley, and Hadley unbeknowest to him - has him on speaker. Harbinger breaks out of character, to complain about being on speaker - "I don't even know who else is listening to this! How dare you!" Anyone who works in an office environment understands this joke all too well. And the dialogue, can be, at times crisp and quippy. Others..stale and telegraphed. It's unevenly written. At points, engrossing (not to be confused with gross or gory, although it is to a degree that too), and others even fun. But..it's also to a degree a muddled mess of horror film references and cliches...without the directorial and writing finesse of a Quentin Tarantino or Martin Scorsese or even Rodrigo Rodriquez. In Taratino's films Kill Bill, Pulp Fiction, and Inglorious Bastards - you see the references, you see the commentary, but it does not overwhelm the film - the film works as both meta and story. Same with Rodriquez's homage to Sergio Leon's films. All you have to do is see their films, to see what is missing in this one. Even Kevin Williamson's Scream - which dances a fine line between snarky commentary and heartfelt cheesy fun. In Scream, Williamson winks at the genre that he is lampooning, references it, yet at the same time pays homage to it. It's more than just a meta. The characters are set up one way, and shown to be something else. The twists seem less obvious, less telegraphed, and the story...more fun. In short, these film-makers give the viewer what Whedon/Goddard can't quite accomplish...characters to love, and meta to twist through the brain.
Years ago, I was told that I had a tendency to complicate things. To do too much. To add to many threads to a story, too much meta, to throw in everything but the kitchen sink.
Too ambitious for my own good. And I think that's the problem here. If you read the meta above...you'll note there's a million things in this movie to play with. References to other movies, references to how we view film, to horror tropes, to why people what horror, but...the story gets a bit lost in the business of the meta. It's too busy. You almost wish they had an editor - someone to come in and say...yes, this is great, but too much! Too much. No clear focus. A film school grad or video store geek gone nuts.
I can identify - for that is my problem. It's the difference between the gardener and the architect. The writer who is a gardener tends to plant everything, he/she doesn't plan it out first. They just meander. And after a bit we get Kudzu, a crazy growing bush that strangles everything. While the architect, scales back, is careful. See Tarantino for an example - his Pulp Fiction is a tour de force of pulp film references. He comments on the trope, but he doesn't throw everything in. He keeps it simple. Just as Rodriquez does in Once Upon a Time in Mexico - he references Sergio Leon, not every Western ever made - which would throw him into parody. It's a fine line...I think and an art, that few can pull off well.
At the end of the day, it's a good flick for the netflix rental. I wouldn't say it was worth the $13.50 I forked over. More like $5, if that.
Or for those who have seen it and wish to discuss.
Yes, I know..for someone who keeps saying she's not a fan of Joss Whedon, I certainly see and read a lot of the man's works, don't I? There was this blog post that I read online somewhere that stated -- if you want to find your way into a girlgeek's heart, watch everything Joss Whedon has done. Sigh. Too true. We girl-geeks have a weirdly ironic love of Whedon's stories. I've no idea why. Best not to wonder why...just to do or die. I am, as you well know by now, extremely critical of things I love and enjoy. What can I say? It's the car I drive or how I am put together.
The following will compare Cabin with Hunger Games and various other films. Before going into the review, it feels odd to do a meta on it, since the film itself is more a meta than a film or a meta on the horror genre in general.
A quick summary of the plot:
Five college kids go to a cabin in the woods, which one of them states belongs to his cousin and he wants to check out. It will be a fun weekend. The cabin is next to a lake. They'll swim, drink, smoke pot and frolic. Meanwhile, unbeknowest to the kids, there's a government group plotting their demise. At the head of this operation are Bradly Whitford and Richard Jenkins, with Amy Acker as their girl Friday, playing a role that is shockingly similar to the one she played on Angel. The lab feels like a split between The Initiative on Buffy and Wolf Ram and Hart. Their goal is to sacrifice the five college kids to ancient gods lurking beneath the surface. Each country around the world is doing the exact same thing. Woe to all, if they fail. For the Gods will rise and devour us. The kids are manipulated by drugs and other means to fit their horror flick roles: Jock, Whore, Egg-head, Fool, and Virgin. They aren't really these things in reality. In reality - the Whore hasn't slept with her boyfriend yet. Her boyfriend is a sociologist and on scholarship, and the egghead knows less than he does.
The Virgin recently had an affair with her much older professor. And the Fool, is just a pot head, but a rather resourceful one and figures out the whole enterprise pretty quickly.
The people in lab coats discuss their daily lives, crack jokes, and appear to have your typical office lifestyle. They take beats on which monsters the kids will unleash.
The film proceeds to take pot shots at each of the standard tropes in this genre.
1. The egghead, Holden, is creeped out by a horrific painting of zombies butchering a goat, and pulls it down, only to discover a mirror that acts as an one way window. Through it he can see Dana (the virgin) getting undressed. Freaked out, he lets her know, and they switch rooms, where she finally hangs the picture back up again, then throws a blanket over it. (This is a homage to so many of these teen slasher flicks, although they usually watch the girl get undressed first. Or the girl watches him get undressed.)
2. There's various creepy misleads in the extremely creepy cabin. They swim and kid about something being in the lake. They dare the Whore to make out with the wolf head, which she does - and it's equal parts gross and creepy. (I couldn't watch it.)
3. They play a game of truth or dare. Dana, who we are told always wimps out and takes "truth" over "dare". Before anyone gets a chance to dare her - the basement door magically opens. The nerdy guy - who apparently is the only one in the group who has ever watched a horror movie - says, "okay that's weird, how'd that open?" The Jock replies, the wind.
The nerdy guy replies..."and that makes no logical sense whatsoever". But the Jock decides they must go down and explore or Dana should. Dana creeps herself out. And screams. They all enter. And begin to investigate. Nerdy guy/aka the Fool suggests they go back up stairs. This is a really bad idea.
As this is going on, the government guys tell us that while appears the Game is rigged it's not. They have to give the kids chances to get out. 1) They set up the harbinger of doom at the gas station, creepy old guy, who tells them that they are going to their doom. 2) The basement - they get to choose whether to go down there. If they don't, the trap is never sprung. Each toy or item in the basement chooses their fate - how they will be killed. And to a degree, their decision to choose that fate has already been sealed, since the people below them are manipulating things to ensure they will go into the basement, will trigger a monster, and will walk into that monster's grasp. But they have to be given a choice, so that the sacrifice is justified - they are killed for their sins.
The means of death is chosen by Dana, the Virgin. The possibilities? Let's see...we have the locket that is cursed by a ghost (Skeleton Key and The Changling, also Ghost Story come to mind), the puzzlebox that raises the Cenobites who torture you (aka Hellraiser),
the film strip (House on Haunted Hill and the Ring), the music box...I'm not really sure what one the egghead is potentially pulling up - it might be a merman. Bradley Whitford (Hadley) bets on the merman and wants the merman to be chosen - and ends up it's main course near the end of the film.
The big twist is that the Fool and the Virgin, against all odds, escape their puppeteers clutches and manage to defeat the zombie torture family from hell (think Night of the Living Dead by way of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre II or Wes Craven's these Hills Have Eyes.) Only to find themselves in a glass elevator surrounded by a gallery of monsters, each from various horror films. They call them monsters from our nightmares. No, says Amy Acker's scientist, they are the creatures from which our nightmares are derived. Monster spiders, monster snakes, men in white masks, aliens, squids, vampire bats, the girl from the Ring, zombies, a ballerina with teeth and a gaping mouth for a face...it's almost as if the writers pulled up a whos who of horror monsters and threw them into the movie. The cells themselves, housing the monsters, with their clear glass walls, are reminiscent of the Initiative in Buffy S4, actually the whole lab reminds me of the Initiative, but Buffy did a better job, the Initiative, it's characters, and the protagonists were more complex, more interesting. Here, we have office drones joking about speaker phones and plotting reconstruction on their house...while plotting and betting on the ritual sacrifice of young college students to appease an angry god below. The wander through the government maze, and find their way to the sacrificial chamber - in a sequence that is oddly reminiscent of Resident Evil - where the lead fights government drones and zombies and military goons to get out of a government facility. In the chamber, they figure out that they are the sacrifice, and Sigourney Weaver pops up in Lilah Morgan's suit to explain it to us. She says, either they die for the world or with the world. Actually she states, as did Hadley and Jenkins earlier - that all is not lost, as long as the Virgin dies last. She must be the last human standing. The final sacrifice. The Whore goes first, then the hero, then the fool, then the intellectual, then the virgin - she could even survive...as long as she has suffered and learned. So to save the world, in any event, the Fool must die and she must remain.
The Fool or Trickster states: "Neither option sounds that appealing."
He's not willing to give up his life for the world. Why should he? Is the world worth it? Dana, the Virgin is...but she doesn't succeed, and instead, Sigourney Weaver and the zombie butcher girl fall into the crevice, clearly not enough to wet the gods appetite, since they rise up regardless as the Fool and the Last Girl standing smoke a reefer together.
Cabin in the woods doesn't start the way you'd think. The movie poster - which I rather love and is the reason I went to the movie, well that and the fact that it was written by Drew Goddard and Joss Whedon and geeks everywhere have been in a swoon over its release - does sort of give it away, but not quite - the poster is better than the movie. So too is the trailer. Which is annoying. I hate it when that happens.
The credits depict various ancient human sacrifices, proving once again that neither of these guys has spent much time studying mythology or theology for that matter, and great deal more time studying horror tropes. The frustrated mythologist in me was both amused and disgruntled. We start with Egypt, jump to Greeks, then Mayans, the Azetecs...and finally Dante's Hell...all paintings on the walls. Sort of the Western World's take on human sacrifice as translated by the St. James Bible.
It's more complicated than that. Jesus actually was a human sacrifice although not to appease an angry god. Wicca is said to do the human sacrifice - the rite of spring. Where the Mother Goddess devours her lover son. Actually, most religious sacrifices were male, at least in Europe and the desert cities. Osiris, Jesus, Mohammed, The Wicker Man, the son of Mab. Virgins were sacrificed by the Aztecs and Mayans. But it varied. And if you delve into the ritual, study the mythology, and seasonal twists and turns, as well as the context - you'll note that in most cases the sacrifice was willing, much as Jesus is in the Christian mythos. And often, it's a person that is important to the people left alive. Abraham sacrifices Jacob. The Eyptians lose their first born son in the Exodus. But Hollywood and films aren't made by people who studied history, biology, physics, or studied mythology, but people who watched movies, lots of movies - movies that drifted out of oral narratives and urban legends. And they often reference themselves. And in the world of film...
1. There's the murderous gaze of the viewer, and often the male gaze...both go hand in hand
2. The Virgin or last girl Standing - the sin-free protagonist, who suffers, and loses everyone she loves, but defeats the villain
3. The Trickster or Fool who flips the story upside down, and supplies the twist
In horror films, typically, the whore dies first, the trickster next but that's a mislead, he pops up again, the jock, then the intellectual, and finally there's the girl...who you root for. Sometimes she kills the villain, only to be slain in the sequel. (See Friday the 13th or Halloween or Nightmare on Elm Street or the Alien films...by the third or fourth one, Ripley is gone.)
At the end of Cabin, Sigourney Weaver (the original last girl standing from Ridely's Scott's Alien or the original sacrifice in the comedic Ghostbusters), in a nice prim suite, looking like the senior partner at Wolf Ram and Hart (oops wrong series) pops up and explains to our young heroes that the youth are sacrificed. A five person tribute. Whore, Male Hero/Lover, Fool, Intellectual, and finally the Virgin. And my mind immediately drifted to The Hunger Games...where children are sacrificed for the sins of the districts. In that film we also have the hero, the whore, the last girl standing, the intellectual, and the innocent...and the trickster. And in Cabin like Hunger Games, college age students, bright kids, our world's future, or in Japan nine year old little girls are sacrificed to maintain the status quo of bored governmental workers who wank off watching teens have sex in the woods, or bet on which monster they'll unleash.[ETC: the governmental workers or drones in lab coats are clearly meant as stand-in's for the viewers.] Weaver explains they are sacrificed for the good of all. They are tributes. Just as President Snow in the Hunger Games states that executing these tributes is good for all. Or as they state in Battle Royal.
Franz, the nerdy stoner and male protagonist, asks - "why not just execute us. Put us on a slab, cut the throat. Doesn't sound that complicated."
Weaver: "Because it's more enjoyable to watch you suffer. To watch you be tortured and pay for your sins."
The same conversation happens in The Hunger Games, where Snow explains to the Game Master, Craven, why it makes more sense to play the game. It's more enjoyable to the viewer. The viewer wants the game. Wants to see someone figure out the puzzle and survive against all odds. The murderous gaze of the viewer - first played with by Hitchcock in Rear Window, where the protagonist watches a murder than tries desperately to do something about it.
Later in Peeping Tom - about a murderer who watches and films his victims, the victims he films, he kills - filming them in their final death throes. Until he falls in love with the girl next door...and resists the urge to film her, because if he does, she dies. In Cabin - the government drones get off on watching the kids die, celebrate as the girl is tortured on screen, and root for her to succeed and die at the same time. Much as the Capital viewers root for the tributes to kill each other, and at the same time for the last girl standing to survive. [ETC: In both films they are stand-in's for the viewer, who gets off on the torture and mayhem.] Making me question what it is I like about the genre, and it is that...watching the protagonist, often female, find her way out of the maze, survive. Ripley in Alien and Aliens, Neve Campbell's character in Scream, Jamie Lee Curtis in Halloween...
The difference between Cabin in the Woods and The Hunger Games is Whedon and Goddard hide behind metaphorical monsters, they justify the horror, the rising of the old nightmares,
the torture, through the creation of an evil God or other. They justify the murderous gaze by stating the world would end if it did not exist. While in the Hunger Games, the evil God or other is human beings. The monsters are human. Cato is the threat not the zombies. There is no God, there is no ancient monster. We are the monsters. It's only our faces that stare back at us in the mirror. So in some ways, Cabin is the safer movie, the characters aren't real, this is just a game, a fun romp. A meta on film lore. We are safe inside our classroom watching a film strip on the monitor and taking notes. Detached, like scholars, analyzing wars from the ivory tower of historical perspective. Restructuring it, revising it to fit our own worldview. While Hunger Games, which oddly is PG-14 not R, and slanted towards a much younger audience and a female one to boot, is far less safe and far more direct. It asks...don't we have a third choice? Is violence and aggression the only one? Is heroism really killing monsters? Really?
Cabin in the Woods is directed towards the 18-34, actually I'd say 46 year old, white boy, although it also fits the film geek like myself who has watched and analyzed one too many films in their lifetime. Most of my audience fit into the former demographic. And it does, tongue-in-cheek, poke fun at that audience - the white adolescent man. The villains if there are any, are the white lab guys who are in a way stand-in's for the white male demographic these sort of films appeal to. [ETC: The white male viewers chewing popcorn and laughing at the kids dying on screen.] The film operating as both entertainment and a meta at their expense.
At one point, Franz Katz - the Fool - whose character's name I can't remember and it's not all that important anyhow - states: "I'm in a reality show? My parents are going to be so bummed that I'm a burn-out." [A shout-out to the murderous gaze. We, an unknown audience is watching.]
Like Hunger Games, Cabin pokes the audience for getting off on this sort of thing. Enjoying it. Cabin provides a justification of sorts, pats us all on the back, much like Serenity did, saying - it's okay, you were made this way. It's not your fault. And it's all religion's fault or the evil gods we think are real - anyway. If those gods didn't exist, if we didn't believe them - we'd live in a happy world. (Not true. And somewhat niave. The Hunger Games, a film based on a young adult novel, addresses that world-view head on. Since it is a world without religion, a non-secular existence.)
At the end of the Hunger Games triology...Katniss states a world that sacrifices its children for its continued well-being and privilege, is not a world worth living in. To be fair, Cabin in the Woods states more or less the same thing - a world that sacrifices its young for its continued survival is not a world worth living in. A comment on War, if ever there was one. For who serves in our wars? The young. And who is forever changed or murdered in them? The young.
Both Dana and Franz Katz's character muse...this isn't quite right. They don't fit the archetypes they are assigned. And their choices are removed from them. They are stripped of their identities to play in someone else's game. A commentary if there ever was one on reality shows - where people are stripped of their identities and provided manufactured ones. The Bitch. The Saint. The PRima Donna. The Jock. Labeled, indexed, and neatly catgorized.
Sigourney Weaver: And last the virgin.
Dana looks at her: Meaning me? But I'm not...
Sigourney Weaver: We have to deal with what we have to work with..
Somewhat disturbing this bit here. So because she's only slept with a professor, a much older man...she's still a virgin? Which brings up various points..the established archetypes (even if they aren't real), the male gaze, and the last girl standing. The male gaze is an on-going theme in Whedon's work, starting with Buffy and following through to Dollhouse and finally Cabin in the Woods. The egghead discovers a one way mirror that allows him to watch Dana without her knowledge. He watches her start to undress, and stops her. Then she, is placed in the same position and stops before he takes off his pants, throwing up a blanket. Meanwhile on the white male government workers are disappointed - no boobs, and when they push the whore and jock into an embrace in the woods, they get off on her nakedness and the sex, a whole group stands in rapt attention waiting. A voyeuristic thrill to watch the sex, then to see her decapitated on screen, and dismembered.
Franz states: But this doesn't work. Jules acting like sex is all she wants? That's against her personality. [The blond hair dye made her sex-obsessed...an interesting comment on bleached blonds...which we will ignore, considering the two leads of Buffy were both bleached blonds and got libidious on-screen.] Or (Chris Hemsworth) acting dumb jock? He's smart, a sociologist. They've made us play roles, like we are puppets. And what is that voice...telling us what to do?
Like Hunger Games, Cabin's manipulators push the characters through the paces. It's like any reality show - a bunch of amateur social psychologists manipulate humans to do horrible things and torture them. For an audience with an appetite for it. Asking us, why do we get off on this?
And of course Weaver, of all people, comment - that the girl, the virgin must be last.
The one we have not seen have sex. Who lost her lover. Who lost her friends. Her purity is the last sacrifice...and it comes, when we least expect it. In The Grudge, it comes in Grudge II at the beginning of the film. In Alien, at the end of Alien III, the only one who is never killed may well be original scream queen Jamie Lee Curtis from Halloween.
I wish the film was clearer. It feels as though the writers wanted to throw every horror film essay or meta they'd read into the film, reference them all. Their emphasis the torture porn and reality film genre of the post-modern age, although I saw classics in this mix. Werewolves and a few bats from Pitch Black. It feels as if we are watching a film students or video store geeks meta on horror.
I wish I cared more about the characters. I do sort of root for Dana and Franz, but not completely - the actors win me over but at the end I still don't know their characters and that may well be the point. I'm not supposed to. Their characters are unimportant. They represent archetypes - the nerdy/stoner fool who surprises you (Randy in Scream comes to mind), the last girl standing (I Know what you did last summer, Halloween, Nightmare, etc). It's the theme, the overall metaphor that is important here and all you need for that are archetypes. Which brings me to my main criticism and disappointment in all of Whedon's work post Firefly...somewhere along the line the writer became more interested in writing "meta" then telling "story". As if he's trying to justify the film degree he received? Martin Scorsese has also been doing this lately, annoyingly so, and losing the story as a result - oh film critics and film geeks love him, but the story seems to get lost in all the references. (See the Departed, Shutter Island, for examples). The characters feel more like pawns or puppets, sound-pieces for his message. The director and writer is more interested in blood splatter and cool special effects than in who these people are. People aren't important after all. And it appears to be a trend with other similar genre filmmakers. I'm looking at you, George Lucas, who does much the same thing of late.
There are some wonderful bits and pieces here. A rather hilarious joke about a speaker phone. The harbinger of doom is speaking to Hadley, and Hadley unbeknowest to him - has him on speaker. Harbinger breaks out of character, to complain about being on speaker - "I don't even know who else is listening to this! How dare you!" Anyone who works in an office environment understands this joke all too well. And the dialogue, can be, at times crisp and quippy. Others..stale and telegraphed. It's unevenly written. At points, engrossing (not to be confused with gross or gory, although it is to a degree that too), and others even fun. But..it's also to a degree a muddled mess of horror film references and cliches...without the directorial and writing finesse of a Quentin Tarantino or Martin Scorsese or even Rodrigo Rodriquez. In Taratino's films Kill Bill, Pulp Fiction, and Inglorious Bastards - you see the references, you see the commentary, but it does not overwhelm the film - the film works as both meta and story. Same with Rodriquez's homage to Sergio Leon's films. All you have to do is see their films, to see what is missing in this one. Even Kevin Williamson's Scream - which dances a fine line between snarky commentary and heartfelt cheesy fun. In Scream, Williamson winks at the genre that he is lampooning, references it, yet at the same time pays homage to it. It's more than just a meta. The characters are set up one way, and shown to be something else. The twists seem less obvious, less telegraphed, and the story...more fun. In short, these film-makers give the viewer what Whedon/Goddard can't quite accomplish...characters to love, and meta to twist through the brain.
Years ago, I was told that I had a tendency to complicate things. To do too much. To add to many threads to a story, too much meta, to throw in everything but the kitchen sink.
Too ambitious for my own good. And I think that's the problem here. If you read the meta above...you'll note there's a million things in this movie to play with. References to other movies, references to how we view film, to horror tropes, to why people what horror, but...the story gets a bit lost in the business of the meta. It's too busy. You almost wish they had an editor - someone to come in and say...yes, this is great, but too much! Too much. No clear focus. A film school grad or video store geek gone nuts.
I can identify - for that is my problem. It's the difference between the gardener and the architect. The writer who is a gardener tends to plant everything, he/she doesn't plan it out first. They just meander. And after a bit we get Kudzu, a crazy growing bush that strangles everything. While the architect, scales back, is careful. See Tarantino for an example - his Pulp Fiction is a tour de force of pulp film references. He comments on the trope, but he doesn't throw everything in. He keeps it simple. Just as Rodriquez does in Once Upon a Time in Mexico - he references Sergio Leon, not every Western ever made - which would throw him into parody. It's a fine line...I think and an art, that few can pull off well.
At the end of the day, it's a good flick for the netflix rental. I wouldn't say it was worth the $13.50 I forked over. More like $5, if that.