The Cabin in the woods 2012

Spoilers

I wasn’t going to write about this piece of crap but since its been popping up on some 10 best lists and after reading A.O. Scott’s (he should stop writing about movies and get a job driving a cab) glowing review I thought  maybe they saw a different movie than I did. Am I living on another planet or in Bizarro World where dreadful films suddenly appear on best of the year lists? This is a “hip” aren’t we cool take on the once lively horror genre that the filmmakers of this thing, Drew Goddard it’s director and Joss Whedon the screenwriter make me think that they are out to bury the genre once and for all.  I could just see these two boobs sitting around smoking some good high end weed maybe watching Inception and other pop de-lux horror and Sci-fi movies of the past 10 years   for the umpteenth time and thinking “Hey Bro maybe we can make a movie mixing horror slasher flicks with sci-fi.” Far fucking out.  The film begins like so many of these movies do with young attractive 20 something airheads heading off for a weekend in the country. We have the usual cliché driven morons, the jock, the druggie, the slut, the virgin and the nice guy but with a little twist. The filmmakers don’t keep us in the dark for long with what’s going on, and we are soon in some corporate like environment where the employers of this no name company are controlling the lives of the characters and the action of the film. They are the puppeteers and the gang of 5 are the puppets and are at their mercy. It seems that the five airheads have to be sacrificed in order to save the world from being destroyed by evil creatures that live under the earth.  At this point I was laughing and howling so hard and loud that I’m surprised my neighbor didn’t call the cops.  Soon they are being killed off by the company who commands the zombie like creatures and other ugly things and monsters, but the film is so dark and muddy that it’s hard to tell just what is happening. Cut to the chase and we are left with 2 of the original 5 who have somehow managed to survive all the mayhem and gore and are met in the “underground” of the corporation (get it the underground) by a Pandora-Cassandra like figure played by an unbilled famous actress who weaves together all the loose ends, and believe me there are as many of those as there are dead and mutilated bodies. And in one of the most ludicrous scenes I’ve seen in a movie this year (actually it’s a tie with Mary Todd Lincoln battling vampires on the battlefield of Gettysburg in Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter) there is a girl fight between Pandora-Cassandra and the virgin, but again the film is so dark that it was hard to tell who was slapping and hitting who. The film ends badly of course and the world and this piece of garbage come to a terrible end. Now I have nothing against the reworking of various horror and sci fi genres and I relish the few and far between that actually pull this high wire act off. One filmmaker who has done this is Christopher Smith a youngish British director and you can read my reviews of his films which I think are original and twisty takes on the genre on my blog at this link.

http://wwwirajoelcinemagebooks.blogspot.com/2011/01/films-of-christopher-smith.html