Cabin in the Woods

I hate horror movies. I expect the scares, the plots are predictable, and the characters are little more than boiled down archetypes. Even so, the horror genre scares me without fail. No matter how silly or predictable or stereotypical. Every jump-scare makes me jolt and I still cover my eyes when the music ramps up. But at the end of the movie, I stand up, shake it off, and generally forget it happened. The genre is, after all, riddled with such movies that are completely forgettable.

Cabin in the Woods is the first horror movie I saw in theaters in Silent Hill. It is also the first horror movie to make me think since Funny Games.

To me, the movie is genius. It forces all the clichés and troupes of the typical horror movie within the context of an interesting, evolving plot line. It takes five complex characters (or as complex as can be established in the first ten minutes of the film) and forces them into the five archetypes of any regular horror movie: the whore, the athlete, the fool, the scholar, and the virgin. In many ways it feels no different from a classic slasher, and for the first half of the movie we are only reminded of Cabin’s uniqueness through the jarring, but wholly refreshing, juxtaposition of comedy and horror.

You wouldn’t think that such a bipolar movie could bring it all together in the end, and yet somehow it manages just that. At the end there is a moment that for me was almost like cathartic release. Over the years we, the viewers, have seen the slow degradation of the horror genre into the forgettable series of predictable, silly slashers it has become. When Cabin showed its true colors halfway through, I breathed a literal sigh of relief. I was surprised. Surprised by a movie that, at first, forced itself to be everything I hate about the horror genre. But perhaps that’s what’s surprising; despite the plot and the effects and the troupes, the movies still manages to smash through the genre wall and stumble into unfamiliar territory.

If you want a horror movie that will make you think, or if you simply want a horror movie unlike any other, consider seeing Cabin in the Woods in theaters. If you do, I hope you and the rest of the movie-goers enjoy the sly jokes and not-so-subtle tips of the hat to a family of movies that will always be precious to us in that I-love-to-hate-you sort of way.

In short, I loved it.

8/10.

P.S. Those that have seen it or will soon see it: try to take someone with you. There are so many hidden meanings behind the film that can only be discussed with someone who has seen it!