THe Cabin In the Woods was pure genius

[redprinceton]

Originally Posted by Super Silver Haze

"It's literally impossible to make a good horror movie so let's do an ironic deconstruction with lots of winks at the audience. BRILLIANT! PURE GENIUS!"

Haha, yeah. If a horror movie is only good if it scares you, then I have never seen a good horror movie.

Really though, relatively early on in my life, I saw America attacked on live TV. That and the events that followed are probably going to be the scariest things I'll ever see on a screen. I don't watch to be scared, I watch to see the slow descent into madness and chaos.

That is what found footage movies like Blair Witch, [REC], and Paranormal Actvity do so well.

Cabin in the Woods parodies the classic horror movies of the 70s and 80s, and given that that has already been done in movies like Scream, the parody wasn't all that brilliant.

What was brilliant about Cabin in the Woods however, was

Spoiler:

THAT THINGS GO ABSOLUTELY BATSH!T CRAZY IN THE THIRD ACT!!

[Anthemyst]

Oh, hey, spoiler-y question for people who saw the movie:

Spoiler:

What monster would Marty's film have summoned? I know that
Music box = ballerina with the giant circle of teeth for a face
Conch shell = mermen
Puzzle ball = that guy who had an identical puzzle ball and blades in his face
Necklace = some kind of scorpion monster, I think? I thought I saw a picture of a scorpion on it
And of course, diary = pain-worshiping zombies.
No idea what the film would have done, or how it would have been activated. Also if the puzzle ball guy or the music box ballerina are references to specific movies, they were not references I got. The internet has been shockingly unhelpful thus far wrt meticulously cataloguing every reference.

[Super Silver Haze]

Only place I can help with that is:

Spoiler:

Puzzle ball guy was definitely based on Pinhead from Hellraiser. You summoned him by solving a puzzle box.

[Anthemyst]

Originally Posted by Super Silver Haze

Only place I can help with that is:

Spoiler:

Puzzle ball guy was definitely based on Pinhead from Hellraiser. You summoned him by solving a puzzle box.

Oh, awesome, thanks! Is it any good? I like puzzles...

[Baby, ByeBye]

They needed more asian ghosts imo. A girl crawling out of the tv would be nice with juxtaposed next to a giant snake

[banshun]

Saw it a few days ago. I do love this movie and one of the chief reasons is that it does something no movie has ever done (TTBOMK).

Spoiler:

It allows for the inclusion of every preceding horror movie into its mythos (I’m mostly agreeing with and repeating what was said in the linked article). You can view every other horror movie as being an ‘operation’ by the scientists in this movie, filmed, released to the masses, with the money funding future ‘films’. I know of no other film with retroactive continuity that recasts every member of its genre. That’s inspired, and inspiring, writing.

There’s much more to like. The writers are careful to have each character killed only when he or she takes an action based on their archetype (whore (gettin' nekkid), stoner (dumb walk outside to take a piss), jock (uber-jumping the chasm, nerd (plotting an escape as he drives the van)). There are a number of great scenes in the movie. Take the one in which Dana is disrobing and Holden realizes he has a one-way mirror. In this scene, Holden is us, the audience, and Dana is the action on the screen that we realize we shouldn’t watch but find ourselves often watching nevertheless. Accompanying the plot is a continuous second layer of meaning that comments on the conventions of horror movies. This movie will keep amateur writers of the genre tapping away at their keyboards for a long time to come.

Then, that scene in the last 20 minutes is pure love for the genre, irresistible to any fan.

I hope the makers realize that they’re sitting on a gold mine. They could release 30 more versions of this movie, with only a portion of the film re-filmed which would allow the substitution of the other monsters for the hillbilly zombie family. It’s a cash cow.

And every child’s favorite animal, the unicorn, as a death-dealing monster? Pure Whedon humor.

[Anthemyst]

Got the Visual Companion with an unused B&N gift card from Christmas. I was kind of hoping it would go more into the layers of references, not just how the look had been created, but I guess that's to be expected. Mostly it's heavily padded with the entire original screenplay, but it's still worth picking up if you're a fan.

[banshun]

Spoiler:

In an interview, Drew Goddard said that they took their time in the set design to have a lot of very cool things lying around for the DVD home viewer to find. I wonder if each monster has one item in the basement that matches it... A Visual Companion worth its salt will have this detail.

[banshun]

The top spot for theorizing over this film has got to be one of those message board purely devoted to horror films. I don't frequent those so can't recommend one specifically but I'm sure there are long analyses of the film there.

[2pac Shakur]

Based on this thread, I downloaded and watched it.
The stoner dude was the best character. Puppeteers - awesome.
Barter gas. Grey v Blue.

Problem is the downloaded copy was crappy and cut out w half hour left! Gotta get another version and watch the end. So don't blow it for me.

Good stuff so far. Not necessarily pure genius, but entertaining for sure.