A Cabin in the Woods

The Cabin in the Woods

This movie is unlike any scary movie I have seen before.  It is self aware of the classic horror movie tropes and utilizes humor in order to implement them seamlessly.  In a way this movie makes fun of other scary movies while still managing to have a serious and very engaging plot.  After watching this film, while there are zombies in the movie, I would not consider this a "zombie movie".  Instead this film tackles just about every subgenre of horror movies there is.  If you can think of a scary monster, I can almost assure you that it appeared in the climax of this movie.  This was because of the genius self aware plot that was this movie's foundation.

 Without spoiling anything, there is an organization, let's call them the Agency, and their sole purpose is to keep an ancient evil, worse than any monster, trapped in its prison.  If this evil escapes it would mean the end of the world.  The catch is, in order to keep the prison door sealed, the Agency has to produce ritual sacrifices.  It just so happens that these sacrifices have to be made in the exact methodology that a majority of horror movies follow.  That is where the humor in the movie comes from.  Since the Agency has to follow this exact formula, it gives justification for classic zombie movie tropes such as: the "slutty" girl has to die first, the gratuitous boob shot, and it also explains why the group must split up to cover more ground even though they are locked in a house.  The Agency has a "Hunger Games" like omnipresence that allows it to control everything that happens.  It is a very exciting and compelling twist on the horror genre.

The movie that we watched in class that was most similar to "The Cabin in the Woods" would have to be "Night of the Living Dead."  In both films, there is a group of people trapped in a house in the wilderness, waiting for the house to be invaded by zombies.  In "Night of the Living Dead" the man with a plan was Ben, the strong leading man.  However in "The Cabin in the Woods", it is actual the stoner character who realizes that the group's situation is anything but normal long before it hits the fan.  Both films featured extremely aggressive zombies and exhibited large amounts of gore.  I think this movie offers a fresh take on the exhausted sub genre of horror that is zombie films.  It provides a new creative twist on the same overused story that makes this movie stand out among a genre inundated with zombie films.

Rating:
Plot: 5/5 brains
Acting: 5/5 brains
Special Fx: 5/5 brains
Gore: 5/5 brains
Overall: 5/5 brains
Rotten Tomatoes: 92%

I would highly recommend this movie to any fan of the horror genre as it was one of the most entertaining I have watched in a very long time.  If you want to watch this movie, it can be viewed on iTunes or Amazon.

imdb page for "Cabin in the Woods": http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1259521/?ref_=nv_sr_1