The Cabin in the Woods

Cabin in the woods begins with two celrical looking middle aged men in an office talking about their wives and going about mundane office work. Not... read more

Cabin in the woods begins with two celrical looking middle aged men in an office talking about their wives and going about mundane office work. Not quite the beginning one would associate with a horror film- but then this is not any other horror film either.

Taking every single horror/slasher movie genre stereotype in the book, TCITW creates two parallel stories running into each other randomly. One one hand is an interesting premise of a reality show and on the other is the mundane formulaic teenagers stuck in the woods with killers on the loose track. Both intersect in an attempt to entertain and analyze viewer mindsets and genre rules. What is it that makes peeping into others lives so interesting? What is with our obsession of watching American teenagers get killed brutally n screen movie after movie? With nods to classics like The Ring, Evil Dead and even Werewolf, the film assembles a crazy set of scenes that spook in parts but keep you wondering what exactly is going on all the time.

The promise of entertainment however dissipates towards the end a the film meanders to a very underwhelming climax. The build up to the end raises the specter of a frightening end of the world scenario that falls flat on its face.

What the film attempts is not to scare the day lights out of you, but to force a genre post mortem. If you are expecting a decent spokfest, then this isnt the film for you. If you are a fanatic for horror/slasher genre, this one might just be the newest addition to your all time favorites list.view less

Sometimes it is such a blessing if you have not seen,read,heard about a film. I walked into this one with only one piece of information that it was... read more

Sometimes it is such a blessing if you have not seen,read,heard about a film. I walked into this one with only one piece of information that it was written and produced by the director of The Avengers and boy am i a glad to discover this film!

It opens up unlike any horror film i have seen recently. Two men having an inane conversation.The mood and setting is not what you expect a horror film to open with. The frame freezes abruptly while they are talking and the title appears. Next we see a bunch of friends getting ready to leave for a weekend of fun. What follows is a horror film so fresh and pulp, something unlike i have seen in recent times. It's a film which Tarantino and friends would have loved to make. Director Drew Goddard spoofs all the horror film cliches and has a ball of a time adding bizarre things to it. By the time it ends the film had reached a meta level which i had never imagined it would. Non horror fans might find all of it difficult to digest but i was like a kid in a candy store while watching the climax. Chris Hemsworth is the only known face in the film and his look is pre Thor and Avengers.

Word of mouth - The cabin in the woods comes across as a film that came out when a bunch of doped out moviebuffs got together to re imagine a slasher horror film.

Rating - **** (very good)

ticket meter - definitely worth a visit to the theatre. view less

The Cabin in the Woods is marketed as a movie that must be seen without having any prior knowledge of the plot. I'm not sure if this was a smart ma... read more

The Cabin in the Woods is marketed as a movie that must be seen without having any prior knowledge of the plot. I'm not sure if this was a smart marketing ploy. I went in with a clean slate. No trailer was seen. Everything written on the internet was successfully avoided. But at least 3/4th into the film, I wasn't sure where it was headed. I was definitely enjoying it because of the tongue-in-cheek self-reflexive horror genre playfulness. The experience was further garnished by the trademark Joss Whedon humor (who co-wrote and produced the film). The only hurdle was, we have seen plentiful films which pay homage to horror/ slasher films. There has to be something inventive. I kept asking myself, why am I not loving the movie despite the fact that it's so much fun? This question was so deliciously answered by the last 15 minutes. Some films make you fall in love at first sight (or at least halfway in), others at the last glance. But I will not reveal any of the plot details. If the filmmakers want it this way, let them have it.

What I will reveal is this, the opening scene of the film left me perplexed. This was definitely not a scene from a horror movie. This was going to be different. Good different or bad different, I wasn't sure yet. The subsequent scenes are from a bad horror movie, which are usually succeeded by a Dimension Films logo, the one where the characters are introduced cheaply with a garage rock song playing as the scene dissolves into an RV cruising towards the vista Americana. But here, the music abruptly switches to an orchestral sweeping score and a bird hits a wall. (Yes. Literally) And so do we. That's when we are told, this is not like anything you have ever seen before. Not your usual homage film.

The characters portrayed by Anna Hutchison, Chris Hemsworth, Jesse Williams, Fran Kranz and Kristen Connolly, stand thus: a dumb blonde, a jock, a nerd, a loser and the innocent (relatively). They seem like cardboard cut-outs from films like Friday the 13th (1980), Evil Dead (1981) and several other slasher films. But here's the thing, if you don't love horror films, monster films, slasher films, exploitation films.. you know, those films? If you don't "love" them, there is very little for you here. You need to be a fan. If you are, this is probably the tastiest dish to be served at your table in a while. For me, it was a drool-fest, each bite was worth devouring. One thing they forgot to include in the marketing was asking viewers to wear a baby bib.

Richard Jenkins and Bradley Whitford play Drew Goddard and Joss Whedon, the makers of the film. I mean, Sitterson and Hadley, the characters through whom we discover the treasure hidden beneath the film. Whedon made The Avengers recently which is still having a hell of a time at the box office. The mainstream audience is mighty pleased. But this isn't exactly a Joss Whedon film, it is a Drew Goddard film who also wrote Cloverfield. The Cabin in the Woods is a twisted experience. It will surely appease cult film aficionados or even fans of the Theatre of the Absurd. It does what Scream (1996) did for this genre. Except it is better. Way more awesome, if you please. Make no mistake, this is a post-modern genre-filmmaking masterstroke.

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Cabin in the Woods: A disappointment to begin with as the quality of print was bad. I was looking forward to some good quality ghost to appear and ... read more

Cabin in the Woods: A disappointment to begin with as the quality of print was bad. I was looking forward to some good quality ghost to appear and some silence that will kill you with suspense... well lets just say it is from a different genre ... A good idea which if would have met with a better execution might have resulted in a good horror movie. 2/5 view less