Just great. Another movie I want to recommend but can’t really talk about without spoiling the fun of it all. Have you been reading this blog long enough to just trust me?
No? Okay, so I’ll progressively reveal more and more in each subsequent paragraph, and you can decide when to stop. I’ll start with the genre: horror, with a sci-fi twist and some clever comedy sprinkled in. It could be called a “high concept” movie, one that takes an old horror movie trope—the cabin in the woods—and creates something new and interesting out of it.
You can think of The Cabin in the Woods as the smarter, more attractive, more ambitious cousin of Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon. Both share the goal of deconstructing horror movies while trying to be one at the same time. Scream, of course, set the bar for this kind of thing, yet Cabin and Mask both raised it by being much more blatant. But where Mask fell short, Cabin succeeds.
In Mask, the satire is great (credit the writing) but the horror is substandard (blame the directing). Granted, it was an ambitious project for a first-time director, but I always found myself wanting to like it more than I actually did, wishing it could have been the This Is Spinal Tap of horror movies. The Cabin in the Woods actually delivers on the horror. In fact, I wasn’t won over by the movie right from the start. The sci-fi frame story seemed a little too in love with itself, and I worried that the horror was going to be underwhelming or goofy. But when the first attack happened, it was clear that Joss Whedon and company weren’t going to skimp. That’s when I could relax and trust I was in good hands.
If you don’t want to risk spoilers, stop reading now. Otherwise… Continue reading
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