The Cabin in the Woods
The Best Meta Love Song to Horror Movies Ever (Plus a Bonus Review of FURIOSA!)
Dear Reader,
Happy summer! Last year I established the following guiding principles for summer Film Lit Pitch films:
They have a far less direct path to becoming included in a Film Lit class. I’m not saying there’s no chance; I’m saying one would have to get a bit more creative, shall we say, to get them into a high school course. They are, first and foremost, fun films I adore.
Along those lines, to the extent the school-year Pitches have an educational bent to them, these pitches will (probably) be a bit less pedagogically rigorous. Put another way: I’m going to have more fun writing about more-fun films.
I did have a ball writing about Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Pacific Rim, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Aliens, and Star Trek. And those guiding principles still make sense to me this summer. We’ll have some fun; but we’re adding a little bit of a twist this summer: it’s going to be the summer of Apes. Specifically, here’s the remaining summer schedule:
June 26: Rise of the Planet of the Apes
July 10: Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
July 24: War for the Planet of the Apes
August 7: Summer Film Reviews and a fun Top 10 List
I’m really excited for that progression, and I look forward to discussing those films with you. And now, let the summer begin as we discuss The Cabin in the Woods.
“You’re not seeing what you don’t want to see.”
We begin today, as we must, with another shout out to Ryan Lee, a legend of both Film Lit and the Film Lit Pitch—because without him, I wouldn’t be writing about this film. As I recall, he saw and recommended The Cabin in the Woods to me. I saw it. And the next time we saw each other, we had a vigorous debate about its merits. My argument was simple and intellectually dormant: I just didn’t like it. Looking back, I should have said that I loved one part, and didn’t love much else.
If you’ve seen the film—and, again, if you haven’t, go check it out, because the spoilers start coming in the next sentence—you can probably guess the scene I couldn’t resist.
Of course: the Army of Nightmares assault.
It’s such unbridled (literally, in the unicorn’s case) violent graphic fun; and it remains one of my favorite scenes ever. Indeed, it’s safely on my to-be-released Top 10 Violent Scenes list. (I won’t give too much away, but that list also includes the church scene from Kingsman: The Secret Service.) The elevator dings are just the best; the filmmakers are smug in the best way and brash and having as much fun as the viewer is. And Hadley lamenting his ironic end at the hands and mouth of a merman is a screenwriter’s chef’s kiss—one of the best payoffs to a screenplay runner that I can remember.
The sequence is so kinetic and frenetic and fulfilling that I almost wonder if it was the first scene the screenwriters wrote—or, at least, thought of. I mean, it sounds like a classic “What if?”-inspired screenplay idea: “What if every villain from every horror movie attacked at once?” It’s a fun enough idea that I could certainly see two screenwriters spitballing from there and reverse-engineering the rest of the script, coming up with a story to justify and explain that sequence.
“Cleanse the world of their ignorance and sin. Bathe them in the crimson of . . . am I on speaker phone?”
What I’ve come to appreciate about The Cabin in the Woods is how open it is about being a love song to horror movies. It steeps gloriously in presenting a grand unifying theory to horror films by way of meta-pastiche of countless films. Seriously: the Easter eggs and references to other films are too legion to count. (I’ll just mention my absolute favorite: the casting of Sigourney Weaver, horror/thriller movie icon.) But the filmmakers aren’t shy about it: they really know and love the horror genre.
In fact, while I’m here, I’ll tell you: I’ve had The Cabin in the Woods on my summer list since I first drafted a list of all the films I wanted to cover. What finally convinced me to write about it, though, was this recently released trailer for The Strangers: Chapter 1. (Seriously: before you read the next paragraph, check it out.)
No joke: on first viewing, the first few seconds gave me a flash that the movie might be some sort of Cabin in the Woods prequel.
I don’t know if The Strangers: Part 1 will be any good. But The Cabin in the Woods, or, more aptly, that it seems to predict correctly so many things about movies like The Strangers: Part 1, tells us that conventions can be fun. Predictability isn’t awful. As my Screenwriting 434 professor Lew Hunter would put it: cliché is cliché because it works.
“He had the conch in his hands.”
At the same time, the film isn’t naive. It seems very aware of audience fatigue. That’s why the office scenes are so crucial to the film’s tone and approach. Steve and Gary, played brilliantly by Bradley Whitford and Richard Jenkins, know and take seriously that they have the most important mission of all time, but nonetheless find themselves prey to ennui, and have become so used to the routine, so arrogant, that they have become careless and sloppy.
In that regard, an Ancient One slamming their giant hand into the ground to end the film is an unsubtle delivery of another of the film’s key messages: as much value as there is in tradition and convention, there’s sometimes just as much value in pressing a hard reset.
I’m not wrong often about films—or, more accurately, rarely change my mind about films—but I was wrong and have changed my mind about The Cabin in the Woods. I’ve done units about the deaths and rebirths of genres, and this one would work well in such a unit about horror films. (Off the top of my head, it would pair well with Get Out.) In any event, it’s a lot of fun, and a great summer movie.
Quick Furiosa: a Mad Max Saga Review
It will surprise few of you that I just adore and am still in awe of Mad Max: Fury Road. It’s a marvel of ambition, vision, and execution. Its look, feel, and pace, are all film palette-cleansers, and it’s a genre-defining action film.
So there was no way that I wasn’t going to see Furiosa.
I think my first real sense of trepidation was as I bought my ticket to the show, and saw that the run time was 2:28. (By way of reminder, Fury Road is a clean and remarkably tight 2:00 even.) And, I have to say: Furiosa proves once again an effective sequel truism: longer is rarely better. (Sorry to pick on one example, but I’m looking at you, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2:41!).)
Fury Road revels in controlled chaos; each scene is kinetic and stakes-infused. It’s a hard watch in the best way: it’s relentess and aggressive, and it makes you figure things out as the story literally races along. Even more, as acclaimed Fury Road fan and instructor Justin Brown points out, one of its miracles is the efficiency of its exposition and depth; it’s a two-hour chase scene, yes, and yet it’s also about a hell of a lot of other things.
Furiosa is good, but not great. It’s a very unsatisfying sequel. There are moments of the old Fury Road magic, but there are also very, very slow scenes; you realize very quickly where the extra twenty-eight minutes come from. A lot of the character development just doesn’t work for me. And, very simply, it’s not as fun.
The credits feature a final twist: a montage of some of the coolest scenes from Fury Road. They were obviously welcome images, but one consequence was that I really wanted to go back and watch Fury Road again. In nearly the same moment, of course, I found myself wishing Furiosa had been more like Fury Road.
See you June 26th, when we discuss Rise of the Planet of the Apes.
I am glad you’ve seen the light! Just rewatched TCITW recently, actually. Still holds up. Just so much fun. What’s interesting about it now (like Scream before it) is how it knowingly emphasizes the horror tropes of its era while also doing the more old school horror formula self-awareness. Zombies, supernatural curses, torture porn style kills. It feels like a historical document of where the genre was in 2009 when they shot it. Horror movies are kind of like pop music. So aware of what’s “in” at a particular time that it ends up eating its own tail immediately. In a good way.
It’s a bummer that BAD TIMES AT THE EL ROYALE didn’t turn out that great, but maybe I owe that one a rewatch too…
The Strangers: Chapter One is almost shot for shot a remake of the original, which is… an interesting take. It’s not bad but it’s not good, either. Although my favorite of the series is actually Prey At Night, so who knows.
Agreed with your opinion of FURIOSA.