Running Time: 1 hour, 45 minutes
Rating: R
Director: Drew Goddard
Quick Impressions:
The Cabin in the Woods offers fresh new surprises and an amazingly original twist if you’ve never seen one of Joss Whedon’s TV shows. If you’re like me and have seen all of them, then basically that’s why you’re interested in the movie, right? You want more of the same. Well, relax. You’ll get it, and you’ll like it.
Basically, The Cabin in the Woods is a lot more surprising if you’ve never seen season 4 of Buffy, season 5 of Angel, or any of Dollhouse. There’s a certain type of setting that clearly fascinates Joss Whedon. I can’t tell you what it is because it’s a secret, and I don’t want to spoil the surprise for any Firefly fans who aren’t familiar with any of Whedon’s other work. (Although if you’ve seen the ending of Serenity, I’ll admit that you might already have a taste of this type of environment, too.)
I won’t tell you where anybody outside of a cabin in the woods is. But I will tell you that Amy Acker is there, and as you might expect, she’s wearing a white coat.
I’m not giving away any twists there. Amy Acker shows up in the white coat in the very first scene of the movie. So just relax. That wasn’t a major spoiler.
Okay, but say you don’t know anything about Joss Whedon, and you’re interested in the movie because as a horror lover you’re just aching for a big screen bloodbath. Well, you won’t be disappointed. You’ll get that, too.
To be honest, The Cabin in the Woods feels a lot like a full-length episode of Buffy except Sarah Michelle Gellar isn’t there, and the whole thing is rated R. So there will be blood, guts, murder, mayhem, maiming, and several legitimate scares (not to mention moments that will make the squeamish wince and turn away from the screen).
The Good:
Director Drew Goddard (once a writer on both Buffy and Angel) co-wrote the script with Joss Whedon, and the whole thing feels very familiar to fans. In time, we deal with some incredibly similar plot elements and themes. Plus several familiar faces pop up, most notably Amy Acker, Fran Kranz (Topher from Dollhouse), and Tom Lenk (Andrew from Buffy).
It’s hard not to suspect that this movie was finally released because of Chis Hemsworth’s rise to stardom. (I read that it was Joss Whedon who suggested that Kenneth Branagh cast Hemsworth as Thor. Smart move on his part because Hemsworth makes a great Thor as well as a great reason for this movie to see the light of day.)
The rest of the cast is good, too, particularly the ones who aren’t in the cabin. I haven’t seen Bradley Whitford (of West Wing fame) for a while (of course, I haven’t been looking for him). But he was great in his part, as, of course, was Richard Jenkins. This pair had great chemistry. I loved their interactions with each other and there moments with Amy Acker. (In fact, I wish there had been more of those.) The performances of these more seasoned actors mattered more than anything we saw from the college-aged crew in the cabin because Jenkins and Whitford have to make us believe the more unlikely (and less familiar) part of the story. One character who appeared late in the story also gave a great performance (mostly just by exciting us with her presence), but that almost feels like a surprise cameo, so I won’t comment on it much.
I’m not saying that the people in the cabin gave bad performances. Chris Hemsworth is incredibly charismatic. I remember being relieved early on when he wasn’t as dead as I’d first believed. He’s easy to watch, and some of the others were good, too. In particular, Kristen Connolly is quite likeable as Dana, the character I almost wanted to connect with emotionally (though I never quite got there).
And, thanks to one bizarre moment during a game of truth or dare, Anna Hutichson gives an incredibly memorable performance as Jules, the one character whose name I remembered without looking (because everybody’s always talking about her).
Best Surprise That Doesn’t Require a Spoiler Alert:
The final scene with the Japanese school girls is so awesome, arguably the best moment in the whole film, certainly surprising—I mean, genuinely surprising—funny, and well executed.
Best Action Sequence:
Without question, the scene that begins when two cabin dwellers find an unexpected mode of transportation offers the most visceral thrills. The last third of the movie is definitely the best part. Even if you’re not blown away in surprise, it’s still just tons of fun to watch. There’s so much energy and even more blood. If I hadn’t known that Whedon and Goddard wrote the script, I would have assumed that I was watching the ravings of a gleeful tattoo artist on an exciting acid trip. Can’t decide what you love most—catalogues, chaos, or wanton destruction? How about blood? Do you like blood? Mindless slaughter was never so much fun!
Best Scene:
The part in the cellar seems like the distilled essence of primal horror. But the scene that involves making out with a mounted wolf head is much more fun. The business with the mirror in Dana’s room is pretty entertaining stuff, too. Really, there are a lot of great scenes to choose from, plus a couple of fun shocks you kind of see coming that still make you jump, gasp, and smile.
The Negatives:
From the opening scene, the movie reveals its “meta” intentions, so you watch the kids preparing to spend a weekend at a cabin in the woods with an enlightened, tongue-in-cheek smirk, as if you’re in on the joke. You’re not really in on anything at that point, of course. But you do know more than the kids going to the cabin do. You at least know that there’s something more to know. I’m not sure that’s the beginning of wisdom, but it’s the scourge of empathy.
From the start, I found it hard to connect emotionally with the kids in the cabin. The movie first appeals to our intellect, our sense of irony. We’ve seen the man behind the curtain, so we don’t view what’s happening to the kids as reality. I think that makes empathizing with them extremely difficult, particularly because all of the strongest actors in the film are against the kids, not with them.
I liked Fran Kranz on Dollhouse, but I’m not sure he has the screen presence to carry a movie. Granted, he’s supposed to be playing a caricature, but it’s very hard to get emotionally invested in a caricature even if you’re informed that the caricature is not the reality. I’m not sure if the biggest problem is the script or the actor, but something’s a little off.
The whole thing is delightfully cerebral, which would be awesome if I were a robot zombie, but since I have a heart, I would have liked to feel more attachment to the protagonists. (To be honest, in the beginning, it’s a bit hard to see who the protagonists are, hard to know which people to root for.) How do you get invested?
Overall:
The Cabin in the Woods is funny and scary and surprising and fun. It doesn’t have as much emotional resonance as it could, but it’s hard not to have a good time watching it. Everybody likes a zany, free-for-all bloodbath, right?