In the last blog I had a brief comparison about Murder Mystery and Knives Out because they were both parodies of the murder mystery whodunit genre. Rian Johnson did a much better job with Knives Out than the Sandler crew did with their crew. I decided to visit another movie that had a similar vibe to it as these two, and that movie was Cabin in the Woods. Cabin is a horror movie that intentionally does not take itself too seriously. It plays on many of the established tropes and stereotypes of horror films and even goes so far as to verbally state it at it points in the movie. It accomplishes its goals well.
The story was about five friends that pile into an RV to go to one of their cousin’s cabin for a weekend trip. They cross the threshold of a creepy gas station worker giving them a warning, and then they become trapped in the property of the murder organization that needs five stereotypical sacrifices to satisfy the old gods and keep them from rising up. The initially unknowing participants in the ritual have very little free will, other than accidently choosing which monster(s) would come and reap the sacrifice.
The movie took the five main archetypal characters and put them into a situation very reminiscent of countless other horror movies. They had a jock, a genius, a joker, a promiscuous girl, and a virgin. Each characters’ role was outlined towards the end when they are in the blood sacrifice temple. What this movie did differently than others is that they did this is a manner just to parody the genre to say that they would only be viable sacrifices if they fit into these specific character molds. Then when it came to deciding which monster was going to be the one to kill the group, it was a game of chance. This poked fin at the fact that movies like this are all very similar, it just comes down to the roll of the dice of the writer to change a few minor details to make the stories slightly different, but there are so many horror movies that are formulaic. They even went so far in this movie to make the first set of monsters fit into the slasher film mold. The movie was filed with allusions to other films. One allusion that was on the nose was that the guard to the room where all the monitors were with the screens of the group getting killed and unknowingly being filmed. This called specially on The Truman Show, a movie about a guy unknowingly being filmed as a show for everyone else.
This movie did have a strong moral conundrum attached to it as well. So the whole reason for the sacrifice of the group was to please the old gods and to keep them from rising back up and causing an apocalypse. Technically this means that the goal of the lab was to keep the Earth from ending, but they do not in a noble way. The workers took bets on which monster was going to be chosen, and it was not the best work environment to be in if one of the workers was a woman. Their was a moral compass, and that was Truman, which seems fitting due to the movie allusion and that he was the security guard, so he does not want anyone getting hurt. At the end of the movie once the two remaining people left who beat the system find out what the whole ordeal was about, they are forced to decide if they want to sacrifice their lives to save the human race, or if they want to live just a little bit longer and die in the apocalypse. This reminded me of a book I read about a year ago called Cabin at the End of the World. The book is about a gay couple and their daughter that get trapped inside their cabin by members of a cult that say that the world will end unless one member of the family kills another member. So it raises the question first, can a person trust a stranger that the world will end unless one of them is killed, and could the person committing the killing live with themselves if they did the act. (SPOILER ALERT) At the end of Cabin in the Woods the two survivors allow to let the apocalypse start because humans suck, which does not seem like that hard of an opinion to have if you just found out that a roomful of humans was strategically trying to get you killed and betting on how it will happen.
Towards the end of horror movies, there does always seem to be a flurry of action, which makes sense because they want to create a good climax, but the end of this movie just gets so strange and gory, it almost feels like a different movie. When the two survivors penetrate the underground shelter where the workers and monsters are, they unleash all the monsters leading to a massive massacre of military level soldiers and the death of all the lab workers as well. Somehow the two survivors were able to survive another massacre and make it into the sacrificial chamber. Where they get the back story as to why they were trying to be killed. The end sequence takes away from the movie for me, they went too far with all of the monsters and gore, it just seemed overly excessive, but I guess that was the point sense the rest of the movie was them parodying horror movies, which typically include over the top gore.
Although this movie was parodying other horror movies in an intentional way, it still seemed unique. One of the ways it was unique was the weapon choice for one of the killer zombies. He had half of a bear trap on a chain, and he whipped it around his head like a lasso and would throw it so it sank into the back of his victim, it was a pretty creative idea. Overall this movie was good, I would definitely recommend it. On the horror spectrum, it is not that scary, but it is done well enough in other ways that it definitely makes it worthwhile. I gave it an 85, which puts it up high for a scary movie on my rankings. I also watched Lincoln Lawyer over the weekend, and it was good, but I watched The Meyerowitz Stories, and I was disappointed in it, especially after I found out that it was directed by Noah Baumbach, who normally makes great movies about divorce.
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