The Cabin in the Woods

Notice: By virtue of the film's content, a spoiler-free review would be basically pointless so this review contains HEAVY SPOILERS.

I've been gleefully rewatching all my favorite new acquisitions from the Halloween season, and I have to say.... The Cabin in the Woods is even more brilliant the second time around, where I was able to appreciate the full range of nuance in the back-story.

Honestly, when I was watching this film it felt like reading The Hunger Games or watching Avatar: The Last Airbender, in the sense that they've compiled so many familiar tropes but each one has been executed to utter perfection, begetting a new whole that becomes something distinctly unique and formidable. 

Cabin first gives you a Hunger Games-style control center for a Battle Royale blood sacrifice (similar films but the distinction is, The Hunger Games features the immense level of environment control which Battle does not, and Battle features the concept of the blood sacrifice being to placate rather than to demoralize as it is in Games; both aspects being present in Cabin). Then it sets you up with the archetypal 'college kids' isolated vacation' we've seen in nearly every "teen scream" genre flick since antiquity. Finally we throw in some classic Evil Dead "oops I summoned zombies" and the main pieces are in place, though that doesn't begin to address the vast myriad of film references throughout the movie.

This film combines a dozen and ten things, to the fifth power if you count all the monsters. But at its core, at its deepest conceptual level, it's a marriage between two approaches towards horror: the self-aware deconstruction of the Scream series, where a group of would-be victims tap the necessary "rules" of horror films in a bid to survive while the nature of these rules is snarkily pondered in a social context; and the tongue-in-cheek horror-comedy of recent hits like Shaun of the Dead, Zombieland, and Tucker & Dale Vs. Evil; where a basic horror set-up gives way to a humorous farce while lovingly poking fun at horror cliche's. And while I would not place Cabin above Scream (by virtue of what Scream accomplishes), even as much as I enjoyed Shaun and Tucker & Dale, Cabin is definitely the greatest and funniest horror comedy ever made.

And there's no question that The Cabin in the Woods is more clever than Scream. Scream set out to accomplish at least a trio of disparate goals and succeeded flawlessly with them all, but what that means is the deconstruction only received a fraction of each films' focus. Cabin, alternatively, combines a handful of disparate films but enlists each into one single goal: total horror deconstruction. The "rules" are outlined here thrice more vividly and articulately than in any Scream film.

And while Cabin lacks the "meta" aspects of Scream, which Kevin Williamson is famous for (moments where the film ironically -- in the classic literary sense -- pokes fun at itself, ala the "Stab" series), it makes up for it with the elaborate and well-crafted implications regarding the fact that most of the horror films you've watched, and most of the horror films that have yet to be made, are all de facto prequels to The Cabin in the Woods. Every trope, every dumb move, every slow build-up, was all the work of these blokes in a control room in their periodic attempt to save humanity by appeasing ancient overlords. While Cabin almost surely will never get an actual sequel, all you have to do is pick any a horror film off the rack and piece together for yourself (as Marty did in Cabin), what ways the "puppet-masters" are orchestrating the events. 

The sole way in which this film fails, the way -- if accomplished -- The Cabin in the Woods could have bested not only Scream but it would have placed itself in the top iota of horror films ever made, is that it's simply not scary. I don't see why they fell short in that category, it seems basic enough. I get the feeling merely producing/directing the monster scenes differently (in a traditional horror style) could possibly have made it scary. But perhaps they just didn't want to risk gutting the comedy, or betraying the deconstruction, or erring too close to Scream, or lord only knows what. In any case, achieving the best and cleverest horror-comedy of all-time is no cause for complaint. The Cabin in the Woods is an instant classic for horror buffs and it's destined to go down in history as the best-made horror deconstruction.