The Cabin In The Woods

Rating: 5/10 (29 October 2013)

39 years ago, the slasher genre was born with a Canadian film by the name of Black Christmas. What would follow would be a wave of slasher films such as A Nightmare On Elm Street, Halloween, Friday The 13th and Child's Play. Most of these movies had an onslaught of sequels and you began to see clichés over and over and over. Then a slasher movie satire was made with Scream and Scary Movie. This movie was supposed to be an addition to the satire's by attacking every horror movie cliché in the book for a modern audience. Is it good? Lets see.
The plot starts off pretty basic for one of these things; A group of teenagers go up to this deserted cabin in the woods, they awaken something (reminiscent of The Evil Dead) and they start killing them off one by one. We are also shown that this is supposed to be a ritual for some Ancient God that needs sacrifices to be restrained or the world ends because every other country has one of these Gods and all others have outsmarted the creatures sent.
Okay I'll start off with the things I liked. The acting is actually pretty good from all players however nothing that really stuck with me. The CGI is also fit into this description and in terms of slasher films, this would be one of the better ones. The horror aspect of these killers is quite well done in spite of them just being cut outs from The Evil Dead and the humor in this film is actually pretty funny on its own. So what made it bad? The villains (the people who are "the puppet masters"). I'm sorry but these villains need to be talked about in great detail.
First of all, every country has one of these things? Every country has a group of people die and people either don't notice that this goes on. Next, the climax of the film contains a button that unleashes all the monsters they have on standby pressed by the heroes, why would that be so easily accessible if that happened. Thirdly, who the hell finances this? Who the hell would look at this act of killing innocents and say "okay, thats justified."? Fourthly, they consistently use these toxins to implant suggestions and the one guy who avoids it is a stoner, how do those toxins work and why is weed the only way to avoid them? Fifthly one part of the climax includes 3 of the people that pull the strings dying and one shows empathy when they just did the same thing to 4 other people. Really? Sixthly why do these powerful Gods want these sacrifices specifically to happen in generic horror movie order (because they literally explain it like this).
Overall this movie is a mixed bag. While its not the worst I've seen from Joss Whedon, it still has the flaws of the villains which are literally all thats wrong with the film warped into one easy statement. Its because of them that this film doesn't get say a 6 or a 7 from me. It passes off as semi decent on its own but still with huge problems.