|
 Horror
cinema subversiveness need not preclude actual horror, a fact that's
unfortunately lost on The Cabin in the Woods, a brainchild of writer turned
director Drew Goddard (Cloverfield, Lost) and co-writer Joss Whedon (Buffy the
Vampire Slayer) that sets aside actual scares for what's-going-on suspense and
diminishing-returns cleverness. Genre aficionados both, Goddard and Whedon are
interested in playing with convention in slyly self-conscious ways throughout
this collaboration, embracing clichés while reconfiguring them in ways that are
both surprising and, more fundamentally, speak to the relationship between
horror filmmaker and viewer. It's a potentially exciting endeavor that reaps
initially intriguing rewards, as the early sight of apparent government agents
Steve (Richard Jenkins) and Richard (Bradley Whitford) discussing mundane
everyday stuff while prepping for work in a steel subterranean facility
immediately implies—especially thanks to the abrupt, jarring full-screen title
credit that ends the scene—that the forthcoming material will be more than it
initially appears. What that might be, however, remains shrouded in mystery once
attention turns to college student Dana (Kristen Connolly), her suddenly blonde
BFF Jules (Anna Hutchison), her studly boyfriend Curt (Chris Hemsworth), his
nerdy-hunky friend Holden (Jesse William), and stoner Marty (Fran Kranz)—typical
horn-dog types traveling out to Curt's cousin's remote cabin for a weekend of
secluded drinking and sex.
The Cabin in the Woods's employment of stock stereotypes isn't unintentional,
and—crazy spoilers ahead!—after a scene of Steve and Richard taking office bets
on the outcome of the kids' fate (which they're monitoring on a bank of video
monitors, and influencing via piped-in drugs and environmental explosions), it
becomes clear that Dana and company have in fact been chosen for the cabin
because they each fit respective, familiar roles as the virgin, jock, brain,
tart, and partier. As foreshadowed by credit-sequence images of ceremonial
sacrifice, their destiny involves being slaughtered in a modernized blood ritual
in which the kids—by virtue of their choosing to investigate certain creepy
talismans in the cabin's cellar—select which variety of supernatural creature
will be their executioners. In this case, that proves to be a family of "zombified
pain-worshipping backwoods redneck idiots," who emerge from the ground to hunt
their prey, all as Steve and Richard cheer on the ghouls in the hope that "the
system" will be a success and this ancient rite—which is also taking place, and
failing, in other parts of the world, including a Japanese classroom haunted by
a Ring-ish stringy-haired girl ghoul—will avert some horrible, unspoken
calamity.
Goddard and Whedon's tweak old-hat formulas with playful good humor, especially
in the film's latter third, when things go terribly awry and an "army of
nightmares" proves uncontrollable even for Steve, Richard, and their shadowy
superiors. Moreover, their setup proves an initially canny, if somewhat obvious,
commentary on the way filmmakers—here symbolically embodied by Steve and
Richard, a pair of wisecracking cogs in the machine whose concern for their
victims pales beside their obligation to duty and base desires (like Richard's
wish to see a scenario involving a Merman)—reductively manipulate their material
in order to deliver basic, predictable drama. The joke, as it were, is that
horror filmmakers embrace tired narrative standards as a means of appeasing
powerful unseen forces (i.e. the audience) that will revolt if not satisfied in
preordained ways—a thematic thread that turns out to be shrewd, as far as it
goes. Unfortunately, that's not quite far enough, since The Cabin in the Woods's
subversive streak only amounts to upending its familiar paradigm by empowering
its protagonists and, eventually, having them revolt against pigeonholing and
death via a nihilism that never quite rings true.
More problematic, however, is simply that this modus operandi, in which routine
blueprints are first followed and then overturned, winds up interfering with
actual fear. By calling direct attention to its scenario's phoniness, The Cabin
in the Woods follows its villains' lead by reducing its characters to mere pawns
in a critical-theory game in which their survival or demise is something to be
anticipated (since we're implicitly asked to "figure out" how the film will
screw with our expectations) rather than dreaded. Every time things get
horrifying, though, we cut back to the tech wizards who are orchestrating the
whole experience. The “scares” are therefore “ironic” and, being safely cordoned
off behind these “quotation marks,” aren’t scary. While some of the one-liners
are funny, the only reason I could think of to keep watching is to learn what
the overarching reason behind the setup might be. When this answer is delivered,
though, it’s weak, and it is given in the clunkiest possible way: A new
character simply walks onscreen and explains the back story. Worse: It’s a
celebrity cameo. Worse still: The “reveal” nullifies everything the protagonists
have been trying to do. There's no emotion to be felt because, even once they
empower themselves, Dana and company aren't real people but devices in a
conceptual stunt, and thus whether they're felled by a zombie wielding a bear
trap attached to a long chain, or eaten by a giant snake, flying bat, or roaring
werewolf, is irrelevant—not to mention implausible, given that at least one of
the kids has to make it to a conclusion in which someone (here, a cameoing
big-time star) explains and attempts to justify this rigged torture-and-pain
ritual. In the film's finest sequence, Steve, Richard, and their coworkers
joyously celebrate (flirting, stroking their own egos, talking shop over drinks)
while Dana is assaulted on the control room's big screen. Yet despite such lip
service to critiquing its chosen genre, which extends to a punish-the-overlords
finale, The Cabin in the Woods ultimately does exactly what it condemns, prizing
schematic formula and ingenuity over real terror and, more crucially still, over
empathy for those whom it exploits for our scary-movie pleasure. |
