The Cabin In The Woods

Directors: Drew Goddard
Cast: Anna Hutchison, Bradley Whitford, Brian White, Chris Hemsworth, Fran Kranz, Jesse Williams, Kristen Connolly and Richard Jenkins


Whoever has heard of a seminal horror film? Well, no one told director Drew Goddard and writer Joss Whedon that they can’t make a multi-layered horror film, so they went ahead and did just that. Joss Whedon is a self proclaimed hater of torture porn – films like Saw or Hostel, the kind where a group of unsuspecting targets are killed one by one by in slow, excruciating detail. In his interviews, he has questioned the stupidity of the characters that let go of a weapon just when the assailants back is turned. Also, he can’t understand why characters who are high on drugs or sex (or both) are killed first, their death a supposed punishment for indulging in a good time. It’s always the most virginal, the most innocent, who are spared, and perhaps God gives them an extra life for preserving their cherry.

Well, the film questions all these motifs. It starts off as a normal horror film – we are shown a group of five teenagers who are off to enjoy a sex and drugs weekend at a remote cabin. We kind of anticipate the appearance of a Jason like villain or deranged, inbred hillbillies, who will slowly chop them off. That’s when things start to go wrong. We learn that cabin is a part of a government run enclosure which taps victims for ritual sacrifice. Many such facilities exist in different parts of the world and they are necessary for the future of mankind. There are dark beings – old gods – that will wreak havoc and bring on the apocalypse if they aren’t satiated. For some strange reason, we are informed that operations elsewhere have failed and the world’s fate hinges on the future of the American operation.

The intended victims die one by one at the hands of a zombie family, however two of the victims find out the truth and in a bid to escape, release all the horror elements (read all the horror creatures that you have ever watched) from their cages. What follows is a bloodbath from hell where everyone in the facility gets taken out. The intention of this long drawn climax is to desensitize us towards the grimness of horror. We stop being scared and start laughing at the proceedings.

Director Drew Goddard has made a clever film. He has shown us the elements of classic horror, told us what we miss in today’s films and questioned the need for watching the genre. The film fails to scare us and perhaps that’s the greatest lesson of them all – that once in a while we would like to be scared.