Laura Mahony Journal Staff
The Cabin in the Woods, directed and co-written by Drew Goddard, and co-written by Joss Whedon, is anything but typical… in a good way. Starring Kristen Connolly, Chris Hemsworth, Anna Hutchinson, Franz Kranz, Jesse Williams, Richard Jenkins, Bradley Whitford, and Sigourney Weaver, this movie stands tall above other horror films with its intense plot, sinister villains, and shocking overriding storyline intended to terrify and entertain.
You will have no idea what’s happening for most of the movie, which is how it manages to be so incredibly scary. This confusion makes you want to understand, but as it goes on you still have no idea. Pieces of one plot are interlaced into a greater one that you can’t really wrap your head around until the very end. This captivates the audience into staying hooked on trying to decipher the storyline. With this great sense of captivation and its graphical gory scenes, it’s like no other horror film.
Naturally, it starts like any other: – five friends decide to go to a secluded cabin to vacation and get away from reality. They encounter a creepy old man at a run-down gas station, which marks the last real stop before they drive off the map. This is where the predictability ends and the confusion and terror begins. Without giving anything away, the five friends’ fates will be in the hands of something very unexpected, which has never been seen in any film of this genre.
Another point of interest is the unique dialogue. One may believe that horror dialogue is almost entirely definitive, but with The Cabin in the Woods, this is simply not the case. One friend, Marty (Fran Kranz), provides the film with extraordinary comic relief. Unlike most horror films, his dialogue is not just thrown as the relief during the times of terror, but instead it’s just plain funny. I’d see it again just to listen to his lines. This is a remarkable feat in this genre. It’s predictability that makes the viewers lose interest, and often it’s also due to a lack of blood and violence, but in this film, you can be sure that it is lacking neither.
If you’re someone interested in going to see this film, I’d most certainly give the following advice as a viewer myself – expect nothing. You don’t have any idea what’s coming, and honestly, that’s more than half the excitement of going in the first place. The Cabin in the Woods is a rare piece of horrific pleasure. Drew Goddard and Joss Whedon have a work of art on their hands. If that doesn’t make you want to go, what will?
