KRR: So, I Wish 'The Cabin in the Woods' Rollercoaster Never Stopped.

 

Imagine you're on a rollercoaster. The safety bar clicks down over your lap. You're locked into the ride. You'll experience every twist, turn, climb, and fall, whether you like it or not. I experience movies in much the same way. For me, a good movie gives the same catharsis as a good rollercoaster would to an adrenaline junkie. The differences are, of course, that instead of keeping your arms and legs inside the ride, you keep your telephone in your pocket; instead of no food or drink, there's no talking; and instead of being physically whipped around just to experience a quick rush of fear, you're emotionally and psychologically swept through another world. One is much safer than the other, which is why I stay stuck on the couch, while the lunatics wait in line to ride a death machine. 

Naturally, there are good rollercoasters and there are bad rollercoasters, just as there are with movies. Sometimes you leave a rollercoaster never wanting to ride it again. Sometimes you leave a rollercoaster disappointed in how little excitement you got out of it. And sometimes you leave a rollercoaster jacked to the tits with adrenaline because it was just that much fun. Those are my favorite kind of movies. Movies where the moment the safety bar lifts at the end, I scramble to pull it back down over my lap and ride again. Those "Gimme More" movies: The Thing, Mad Max: Fury Road, Sorry to Bother You, Boogie Nights, The Hangover, Parasite, Ocean's 11. Those types of movies.

Those are my kind of rollercoasters. 

And nine years after its release, I've discovered my new favorite rollercoaster: The Cabin in the Woods.

-SPOILERS AHEAD-

So, the plot of this movie is simple in its complexities. And -

Okay, if you haven't watched the movie, stop reading. This is just one movie where I don't want it to be spoiled for anybody. Please.

Still with me? Damn. I'll have to weed out the non-watchers along the way.

As I was saying. The story masquerades as a generic horror movie plot: Five college friends - the athlete, the whore, the scholar, the virgin, and the fool - go out to a cabin in the woods for a weekend where they are (of course) haunted and murdered by something they should have totally seen coming. But there's something much deeper going on in this movie. Beneath the surface are the workings of a classified government agency turned secret society who are monitoring the college students and manipulating the environment around them. It's essentially The Truman Show crossed with every single horror movie ever made.

So, that utterly fantastic concept is the premise for the movie. But who populates the screen? Well, it's a mix of familiar faces and some newcomers. Jesse Williams of Grey's Anatomy and Chris Hemsworth of Thor play the intellectual and the athlete respectively. It's nice to see such famous folks playing little roles alongside the riff raff. I like to think of Jesse Williams' character in this movie as an alternate universe's version of Dr. Avery while he was still in college. It's (somehow) more fun to watch if you convince yourself of that, because Williams plays the characters nearly the same. Chris Hemsworth on the other hand plays his character nothing like Thor. In the Marvel universe they embrace Hemsworth's accent. Not here. Nope. In this movie Chris just mails it in. He barely covers up his accent, and there are times when it's indiscernible what his line is even supposed to be. But hey, who cares if they're trying to pass off Australian eye candy as American-made, he's hot.

The other two familiar faces come in the secret agency control center, the men behind the curtains: Richard Jenkins and Bradley Whitford. Their chemistry makes the entire secret-agency-turned-murder-machine plot work. They're brilliant, even if they aren't straying far from their wheelhouses. Jenkins is playing his normal middle-aged-man character, just without the sinister edge he has in Killing Them Softly, and Bradley Whitford is literally just playing Josh Lyman from The West Wing. It's uncanny. I mean the casting crew must have brought him in and said, "Just do that thing you're very famous and beloved for - Josh!" Luckily, there's no one in the world better at playing Josh Lyman than Bradley Whitford, so it works out perfectly. Quite plainly, put together they're just an excellent comedic duo.

The rest of the cast are not quite as famous. There's Anna Hutchison, who plays the "whore" of the group, and whose hidden New Zealand accent is so well covered only because of how uncovered Chris Hemsworth's is. There's Kristen Connolly who plays Dana, the virgin and main protagonist of this movie. She's great. She's like a college-aged version of Christina Hendricks. She's absolutely perfect in her role, truly.

Okay, I wonder if I've lost any of the non-watchers yet. They're probably bored and don't realize just how amazing this movie is, which is why you're still reading, I'm sure.

Lastly, there's Fran Cranz who plays Marty, the fool. And while I could probably write a dissertation on the many reasons I love Marty, it's a whole lot shorter if you just watch this clip instead.

Fran Cranz is operating on a whole 'nother level in this movie. He's doing what Mickey Rourke thought he was doing in Barfly, but he's doing it twenty-five times better. That's a good reference if you've seen Barfly, and if you haven't, please I beg you - don't. Back to the point. Marty is a genius character. Every single line he says is instantly quotable: 

• Statistical fact. Cops will never pull over a man with a huge bong in his car. Why? They fear this man. They know he sees further than they, and he will bind them with ancient wisdoms.
• I had to dismember that guy with a trowel. What have you been up to?
• Oh my god. I'm on a reality TV show. My parents are gonna think I'm such a burnout.
• Nemo, man, you gotta wake up. Your shit is topsy-turvy.
• Good work, zombie arm.
• I'm living in a world of reefer, leave me alone.

And my personal favorite:

• Okay, I'm drawing a line in the fucking sand, here. Do not read the Latin.

In a movie where you should hang on Marty's every word as gospel, because it's deserving of that, it actually pays off to do so. Eight minutes into the film Marty foreshadows what's to come while rolling a joint. "This is the whole issue," he says. "Society is binding, right? It's filling in the cracks with concrete. Everything's filed or recorded or blogged, right? Chips in our kids' heads so they won't get lost. Society needs to crumble. We're all just too chicken-shit to let it."

That's what this movie is truly about: the crumbling of society. That and monsters. Holy shit, I love monsters. Okay, monster monologue for a minute. If the non-watchers don't jump ship after this monologue then I cannot be held accountable for spoiling anything. You've been warned.

There's a whiteboard about half an hour into this film with different horror monsters scrawled across it, and it was at that exact moment that I realized this movie was special. Because in that moment you realize this agency might really be making nightmares come to life, and if that is what they're doing, well holy shit - I need like twelve of these movies. Unfortunately, there's only one The Cabin in the Woods. Fortunately, that doesn't mean we only get to see one monster. We get to see so many. In fact, we get to see them all. And by all, I mean all.

It starts with the zombie redneck torture family, sure. But eventually we get: a werewolf, alien beasts, mutants, wraiths, regular zombies, Reptilius, killer clowns, witches, sexy witches, demons, a Hell Lord, an angry molesting tree, a giant snake, Deadites, a mummy, the Bride, killer scarecrows, a snowman, a dragonbat, vampires, dismemberment goblins, a sugarplum fairy, Merman, the Reanimated, a unicorn, killer Native Americans, a yeti/sasquatch, dolls, killer doctors, a Jack O'Lantern, a giant, killer twins, a giant tarantula, a pair of wolves, a large frog, a giant robotic scorpion, a giant centipede, some blob creatures, a ballerina with a mouth as a face, Fornicus - Lord of Bondage and Pain, ghosts, a monster squid tentacle, doll-faced terrorists, a giant kitten, and Kevin (an apparent reference to Elijah Wood's character in Sin City).

How I look at my readers who haven't seen the movie. Last warning.

And what does all this amount to? Well, some of the greatest twists and turns in rollercoaster history. The last half hour is essentially a mega-brawl bloodbath between all of those monsters and the secret agency that's been using them to kill innocent teenagers. It's a fucking wild half hour, and one that ultimately culminates in what Marty mentioned eight minutes into the movie: the collapse of society.

So, let's be kind and rewind. The Cabin in the Woods isn't really about a cabin in the woods. That's purely a surface gag. It's really about this international secret agency that sacrifices people in elaborately created environments to satisfy the Titan Gods that live deep within the Earth. If every single ritual sacrifice in the world fails, then the Gods will destroy the planet. Luckily, that's never happened. But this time, everyone has failed except the United States, so it's on Bradley Whitford and Richard Jenkins to make sure these five kids are killed properly to ensure the world doesn't end. And uhhh... Yeah, that doesn't work.

That's where we are now. With less than seven minutes left in the movie, after hours of dodging zombies and dragonbats, two of our protagonists - the fool and the virgin - find their way to a ritual platform above the Gods, where they are confronted by Sigourney Weaver. Full disclosure, I screamed when I saw her. It's such a flex to have Sigourney Weaver in your movie, especially in the final minutes. Like, damn. Y'all really did that? Y'all really went out and got Mommy Ripley to play the ultimate baddy, The Director, for like four minutes? Such a flex. Anyway, I screamed.

This is when Sigourney tells them that the whole world will end in the next eight minutes if the fool, Marty, doesn't die before the virgin, Dana, just as the Gods demanded. At this point the fantastical whiplash of what's already happened just has to put a smile on your face, and the only point of worry is whether or not this rollercoaster will nail the final turn. A part of me wishes it didn't. A part of me wishes Dana kills Marty right then and there, thus saving the world and ensuring eleven more movies. But, as I've already mentioned, there aren't a dozen of The Cabin in the Woods movies. There's just the one. Marty isn't killed. Instead, they do exactly what he said humanity was too chicken-shit to do: let the world collapse. A Titan's hand crashes through the Earth's surface and the death toll from this failed experiment jumps from seventy to seven billion.

And like that, the rollercoaster comes to a stop.

They're like the incompetent Mystery Gang.

That's The Cabin in the Woods, a world-ending roller coaster that makes you beg for more. I watched it twice to write this, not because I needed to (like with Burning) but because I so desperately wanted to see it again. It's a rollercoaster I never want to get off of. And sure, the movie has some problems. The world building makes almost no sense whatsoever, the fact that not a single person falls while running on floors coated in blood is a little strange, and if you begin to think about it even a little bit there are tons of plot holes pretty close to the surface. But, to be frank, you shouldn't do that. You shouldn't think too much about it. What makes this film work so well is that it doesn't take itself seriously. It knows you want to be scared, you want to have fun, you want to get off the ride and think, "That was really worth it."

Well, it is. You can take me to The Cabin in the Woods any night. I'll always get on that ride.

Also, it has a hot scene where she makes out with a moose head.

The Cabin in the Woods KRR: 8.2/10