The Cabin in the Woods
Director: Drew Goddard
Year Released: 2011
Rating: 2.0
In this carefully assembled meta-horror picture, five archetypal characters (the Whore, the Jock, the Virgin, the Scholar, the Fool) go on a camping trip to a cabin, but it turns out they're actually in a cruel experiment by a bizarre organization and their sacrifice is necessary for the continuation of the world. Too self-conscious to be even slightly scary and a little too satisfied with its own 'cleverness' (though it thinks it's deeper than it is), the scenes with the corporate guys watching the students on monitor basically took me emotionally out of it, and the level of viewer-condemnation isn't even close to Haneke's Funny Games. Still, it deserves credit for one of the best 'pure cinema' moments of the year when the Ancient Monsters are eventually unleashed, which is a sequence of violence and bloodshed so crazed and morbidly delightful it makes the rest of the movie (and script) seem like an afterthought.
