The Cabin in the Woods - 2012 - 4 Stars

Director: Drew Goddard
Cast: Richard Jenkins, Bradley Whitford, Amy Acker, Kristen Conolly, Anna Hutchinson, Chris Hemsworth


BIGGEST SPOILER WARNING IN THE HISTORY OF MANKIND GO SEE THIS MOVIE RIGHT AWAY. YOUR EYES WILL FALL OUT OF YOUR SOCKET IF YOU DISCOVER EVEN ONE LINE OF DIALOGUE FROM THIS MOVIE BEFORE YOU SEE IT


So much of the dialogue surrounding The Cabin in the Woods has been about not revealing spoilers that I feel it has both over-hyped and underrated the movie. The conceit of CitW is hinted at in the opening scene and becomes clear during the first act, from there more layers begin to peel off and we are kept engaged and surprised until the final frame. Since those layers continually peel off throughout the movie, I felt the attitude of spoiler alarmists were too extreme: it's as if they believed that any discussion of the movie revolved around a binary proposition of summarizing the whole plot or dead silence. In my Cyrus review I argued that it is best to see all movies with no prior knowledge and I still agree with that, however I do not think that CitW was so sacred that even daring to mention its premise was blasphemous.

The dissemination of information in modern society has made it easier to separate the wheat from the chaff, but it has also made it harder to be legitimately surprised by anything. I appreciate the effort by critics to encourage people to see this film tabula rasa, but the chatter was so overwhelming that I sort of wish I knew the premise going in, instead of being inundated with vague comments about the necessity of a blank slate. The film works best if one is expecting to see a generic horror movie and is surprised by the deconstruction that follows, but a movie written by Joss Whedon that is being coyly discussed throughout the media is ipso facto not a generic horror movie.

I am going to preemptively apologize for ascribing motivations to other critics, but I can't help but think a lot of people protecting CitW were doing so because they are acolytes of Joss Whedon.* I have seen very little of Joss Whedon's work and am generally indifferent towards him, but I doubt other premise-heavy genre deconstructions warranted extreme warnings, partially because they are worse films; I doubt reviews of movies like Phone Booth had similar  disclaimers, but I wouldn't have given Phone Booth 4 stars. The chatter is surrounding CitW is not completely unearned, but it's worth noting that the cult of Whedon casts a large shadow.

The initial premise of The Cabin in the Woods is a clever one, there is a giant multi-national corporation that elaborately stages horror movies scenarios using unknowing participants for an unknown reason. It's a good hook for a horror movie and sets the stage for strong genre-deconstruction and film-criticism. There is currently an abundance of self-aware horror movies (there was even a Piranha 3DD trailer before CitW) what makes CitW better than other meta-movies is its execution. The plot is impeccably constructed, the performances are top notch, especially Richard Jenkins, who is a welcome addition in any movie and there is a strong balance between horror and comedy throughout the film. All these elements combined to create one of the funnest experiences I have ever had in a movie theatre and I doubt a little bit of a priori knowledge would change that.

*Sidebar: Can we please stop applying this bullshit underdog narrative to Joss Whedon. He has produced 4 network television series that ran for a combined 300+ episodes, he has a writing credit on Toy Story, Serenity is one of the few TV shortly-lived TV series to ever get a spin-off movie and finally he just directed The Avengers, which will make 800 million worldwide by the time The Cabin in the Woods is available on DVD. He is incredibly successful by any metric and has had several platforms to showcase his wares.