Filled with monsters of all sorts, blood, and angry underground gods, The Cabin in the Woods has an unimaginable plot twist that most people would never see coming.

Rating: 8/10 (15 November 2015)

Filled with monsters of all sorts, blood, and angry underground gods, The Cabin in the Woods has an unimaginable plot twist that most people would never see coming. However, the entire plan of the film is to allow the audience to think they know what is coming next. With classic slasher film characters and a classic plot, most viewers will think they know what will happen in this film; a group of naive teenagers will be murdered while they rent a house in the middle of the woods, leaving the survivor girl, or the virgin, to fight off the murderer and survive. More or less, in this film, that is not the case.The Cabin in the Woods, directed by Drew Goddard and released in 2012, is a film that has many critics and viewers alike asking questions. With a very specific plot twist for the classic slasher film, many are thrown off by the plot of this film. Some people may not feel as though this is a true slasher film, or even that this film mocks horror. However, I believe that this film takes classic and previously horribly done slasher-films, puts them together, and upgrades the entire ideal of what a slasher-film truly is. In this film, a group of five college friends hop into a van and head towards the middle of the woods to spend a weekend in an old cabin on a lake. The five main characters all represent classic trope characters in this genre of film. For example, you have your slutty stupid blonde character, who in this film is named Jules. You also have your smart and innocent girl, who you later will find out is a virgin, this character is the survivor girl, who is Dana in this film. We then have Marty, the funny stoner character, who is supposed to be stupid, however we soon realize he is the only character that is not passive about what is going on. Another classic trope character we have is Curt, the macho athlete with the hot sluttty blonde girlfriend (Jules), who acts like the savior of the night. Finally, we have the smart nice guy, Holden, who plays Dana's somewhat love interest, before he is soon murdered. I know what you are thinking right now, classic, right? How much more obvious can a horror film get than a group of five teenagers spending a weekend in a creepy cabin in the middle of the woods? That's what I thought too. I was not shocked to see myself jump at false scares, and cover my eyes at intense music. Regardless of this, there was one aspect of the film that drew me into the film more so than I have ever been drawn into a slasher-film before, and that is the concept of the film. The most intriguing aspect of the film is that the entire plot of the movie was based inside another plot of a movie. What the hell am I talking about? Well, in this film, there is a facility that selects people, or groups of friends without their knowing, and controls the entire process of the murders. For example, in this facility, the faculty put wires and cameras all throughout the cabin house. Through many computers and technology, the faculty control every aspect of what goes on while this group of friends is actually at cabin in the middle of the woods. They control the temperature, the air, the lighting, everything. The entire area in which the group of friends are in is actually within a contained dome type structure, therefore, they cannot leave a certain parameter of land. I personally loved how the faculty put a ball type machine, in which the characters find in the basement in the beginning of the film, and twist it, unknowingly selecting how they will be killed.
This is not even half of the film, there's more! We later find out the goal of the facility in controlling these mass murders, is in order to please earth's gods, whom are hidden in the underground of the facility. If the murders are not completed, and the blood of the characters are not given to the gods underground, the angry gods will destroy the entire world. Crazy, right?
Regardless of the fact that this film's plot may be overdone, and chaotic, having hundreds of unimaginable monsters running around killing everyone in sight in the facility at the end of the film, this film strongly represents a true slasher film. It is not ordinary, but it does not mock the classic plot of a slasher-film, it advances the classic plot of a true slasher- film. The film is unique and amazing because it takes a classic slasher film plot, and puts it within another plot, which in this sense is the facility being in charge of these murders in order to please the gods in order to ultimately save all mankind. With many critics stating that this is not a true slasher-film, and that this film is ridiculously overdone, I am here to state that regardless of the fact that the film may be overdone, it is just as true and genuine of a slasher film as any classic, such as Scream or A Nightmare on Elm Street, The Cabin in the Woods has just modernized the slasher genre in order to appeal the typical twenty first century audiences.