This post is nothing but spoilers. Be warned.
“We’re not the only ones watching.” - Hadley
When I watched Drew Goddard’s The Cabin in the Woods for the second time, it is this line that most stuck out to me. It doesn’t come at the most poignant of moments—Hadley and Sitterson are voicing their desire to see Anna Hutchinson take her top off—but it is one of the few moments when the film actively breaks the fourth wall. Kinda. The film is one big meta-narrative about the horror genre, but one of its greatest qualities is that there isn’t a whole lot of winking at the camera. Hadley, Sitterson, and the rest of the workers at the ol' apocalypse compound don’t know they’re in a movie. They’re not even aware that their job is to make one.
Essentially, the latter half of The Cabin in the Woods is about what happens when movie characters fight back against their creators. For a while, everything seems to be going through the perfunctory motions; the kids drive into the woods then start getting picked off one by one until, apparently, they have all been taken care of. It’s a formulaic horror movie in every way. The only difference is that the film pulls back and reveals to us just what forced this group of stereotypes into this deadly situation. In the universe of The Cabin in the Woods, all horror movies are ritual sacrifices to appease the ancient gods that lie beneath the earth. (Those gods, potentially, being the audience. Though there are a few audience surrogates to be found here.) If none of the sacrifices succeed, then the gods rise and the world comes to an end. Of course, that’s ultimately what comes to pass.
This audacity what makes the movie so brilliant. Goddard and Joss Whedon knew what they wanted to do with The Cabin in the Woods from the beginning, and at no point did they compromise their vision. Matters simply escalated and escalated until the only thing left to do was end the world. One of the joys of reflecting on this film after it’s over is the contrast of where it begins and where it ends. The first shot is of Richard Jenkins and Bradley Whitford getting some coffee and discussing cabinet repair—a scene that undoubtedly jars anyone that thinks they’re in for just another slasher movie—and the final shot is of a giant hand emerging from the ground about to cause mass destruction. The Cabin in the Woods goes so far off the map that it makes even the boldest of movies look tame by comparison.
The first time I saw the movie, I thought it was a brilliant deconstruction of the horror genre. However, it took me until the second viewing for me to wholly appreciate what it was going for. (And it’s going for a lot of things, I might add.) There has long been a culture around horror films where fans will hoot and holler at the events onscreen despite the fact that these events are, well, pretty darn brutal. This is truer of slasher flicks that simply pile on the kills to the sounds of applause than of the creepier brand of horror; which I actually prefer. But that’s just me. For much of The Cabin in the Woods, the characters onscreen join in treating the violence onscreen lightly. The aforementioned scene in which Hadley and Sitterson beg to see some breasts intentionally mirrors some of the things that might be shouted at a screening of the latest Friday the 13th movie. Just as horror films have been doing for the last several decades, the employees at the apocalypse compound are taking the slaughter of young people and turning it into entertainment.
This drastically changes when the movie characters turn on our surrogate filmmakers. After the initial round of killings, the only two left standing are Dana and Marty. (Marty being the one who slipped through the cracks.) Instead of standing around and waiting to be finished off, they find an elevator that takes them down into the apocalypse compound. When they finally set free the monsters which could have been set on them, they are giving the employees a taste of their own medicine. While these incredibly bloody and chaotic scenes are done in entertaining fashion, the tone in general takes a turn for the darker. The effect is similar to what would happen if the killers in a horror movie were set loose on the audience that was previously hooting and hollering. It stops being entertainment and everything gets real awful fast.
Of course, everything that happens is still incredibly silly. The whole premise is ridiculous. That doesn’t mean you can’t take the movie seriously. The Cabin in the Woods spends its final act turning a mirror onto the audience and the entire horror genre. Even before everything gets really wacky in the apocalypse compound, the film has several moments that poke fun at how stupid the characters in horror movies are. There’s the scene where our “heroes” stop at the stereotypical gas station and are greeted by the stereotypical piece of tobacco-chewin’ white trash. There’s the scene where they voluntarily go down into the basement and choose the means of their own destruction. And—most humorously—there’s the scene where a gas is pumped into the cabin that prompts the gang to split up for no particular reason. These characters are set up as reasonably smart people early on, but when you want to dumb them down there’s nothing that works better than throwing them in a horror movie.
Touches like this make The Cabin in the Woods not only a great movie, but a pretty darn compelling piece of film criticism. It frequently comments on how dependent horror movies are on the same old formulas, and during the mass monster attack at the film’s climax we see all of these various formulas thrown together into one ultra-bloody stew. As much as the film tears the genre apart, it also clearly comes from a place of love; something Goddard has stressed in multiple interviews. In the Q&A he did following my first screening of the film several weeks back, his horror movie fandom came through in everything he said. When one person asked how difficult it was to come up with all the different monsters that attack at the end, he chuckled and said that was the easy part. This movie would not be as infectious as it is without the enthusiasm of Goddard, Whedon and all involved. If it was merely an attack on horror, then it would be a far less pleasant experience. It is not simply about horror movies themselves, but the culture that exists around them.
Lastly, there is the question as to who the real heroes of the movie are. I saw it argued in a piece that the folks in the apocalypse compound are in fact the heroes. (I don’t recall where I saw this, so I can’t link to it at the moment. If you know what I’m talking about, speak up and I will give credit where it is due.) I can see where this argument is coming from, as they aren’t the ones who end the entire world. In fact, they are killing a few just to keep the world afloat. However, this explanation only works if you see The Cabin in the Woods as a literal film about how humanity is saved through the sacrifice of a few dumb college kids. I have no problem with someone enjoying it on that level, but that’s not at all how I see it. When the apocalypse comes at the end of The Cabin in the Woods, it signifies the potential apocalypse of the horror genre more than an actual apocalypse. Dana and Marty are the heroes because they were able to break free of the predestined formula.
The employees at the apocalypse compound aren’t saving the world so much as they are enforcing the status quo. This is not the case simply with the physical world they inhabit, but also the genre they inhabit. If anything deviates from the formula, it all goes down the tubes. The ending of The Cabin in the Woods does not simply portray the tragic destruction of humankind. Rather, it argues that the potential exists to blow up everything we know about horror movies and start anew. This film is nothing if not proof that most horror movies tend to play by the same rules. It also shows the possibilities when a filmmaker decides to subvert those rules. Marty says it all in a line of dialogue in the final scene: “Maybe it’s time for change.” He might be on to something.
No comments:
Post a Comment