Interesting yet slightly disappointing 'meta' horror film...

Rating: 6/10 (16 April 2012)

The lab guys try to shoehorn their subject matters into their own idea of what a horror film is and they get it right (just about) to start with. Luckily their test subjects are dumb enough to fall for their tricks but not without having to tweak their environment somewhat to force them to split up or venture out into the darkness alone.
The lab guys could be like modern horror or 'torture porn' directors; gore loving creeps. Their lab sterile and detached from the violence they themselves are directing. They joke about the horrors happening on their display screens and even hold betting games based on them.
The puppets used in the sarcastic techies real life 'film' are pretty dumb but not as dumb as the techies would like them to be (cause this is 'real' life (see how meta this all is) and in real life people just don't go down into the basement on their own). The players in this strange game cant be manipulated as effortlessly as the lab guys would like (the techies are old and incompetent, maybe bored of their jobs, maybe just careless) and the players finally brake the 'game' and make their way into the inner-workings of it and finally end the 'film' and the world in the process.
Perhaps what the makers of cabin in the woods are partly trying to say is that if the people in horror films acted like they would do in real life then the film simply would not work or would be too complex and may well bore the audience. They could be making a point about the horror audience dumbing down, possibly. They might also have been trying to make the point that the horror genre is getting old and the cheap tricks they use are boring and we are in need of a change in style.
I don't think the cabin in the woods is 'that' film. It is no game changer because it is not a horror film. It is fun purely as a mind f**ck but delivers hardly any scares as the horror actually happening on screen seems like it is being observed by someone and then us so we are detached from the action.
The cabin in the woods also falls into the same traps as the horrors it is trying to mock or homage. A girl is attacked by a zombie for 5 minutes and mauled horribly by a werewolf but not only survives (covered head to toe in deep red blood) but jokes and smiles with her friend as the world comes to an end. And the worst thing about all the hypocrisies in the film is that they can easily be excused by some as being parody moments. I cant forgive them so easily. I understand and enjoy many of the metaphors and the references but I would have liked the main characters to have struggled and acted more realistically. Maybe it just goes to show that it is simply impossible in horror films for realistic behaviour to be shown due to the totally unrealistic nature of zombies and werewolves (sorry if you believe in zombies and werewolves). But this is not a horror film and the reactions could have been thought out better and in my mind could have helped to make more of a point about the nature of horror films.
The film is a lot of fun though, especially in its final half hour and held my interest throughout but it is not as honed as I would have liked it to be. This could have been something else, something of a real game changer. If they tightened the logic and upped the action in the first half and instead of boring zombies we had a whole host of evils being released by accident upon the unsuspecting students it could have been extra special. Meta-special...