A Clever Self Reflexive FIlm

Rating: 9/10 (21 February 2017)

The Cabin in the Woods is a film of the unexpected. The title itself is conventional for a horror film. However it's the clichés and conventions are exactly what makes it clever, as it turns the nature of a horror film around and exposes it for what it really is.
The cabin in the woods follows 5 friends who take a trip to a Cabin in the woods... We all know how this would go in the context of a typical horror film... they get to the cabin, murderers or monsters are waiting to kill them after they discover a secret. And this is exactly what happens until more layers of a bigger narrative are unpeeled.
There are several intertextual references in the film, such as the trap door, it makes you think of the film Evil Dead, as well as the book and the Latin description the character shouldn't read out, but is anyway. It causes you assume that the narrative may go a similar way but this is a trick of narrative, as the film actually reveals that behind everything that happens, there is someone "pulling the strings" and this is a phrase said numerous amount of times by the characters. There is a concept that emerges, that they are the puppets and there are This concept reveals itself in a bigger way as previously thought throughout the movie. From the very start we know something is off, as the teens are being monitored and watched. We know that voyeurism Horror's trope and therefore it appears throughout the movie; the mirror in which you can see the bedroom, but you can't see the person watching from the otherside, the eye in the reflection of the small mirror and the constant viewing from the "puppeteers."
This film is essentially jumping up and down and screaming "I'm a horror film." People expect films to be realistic, and it's precisely the realism of the horror that people get the scare from. However the cabin in the woods takes all the clichés of a horror and I mean every cliché possible and serves it on a plate for you.
This is most evident in the scene where they are surrounded by every single monster that could possibly exist in a horror movie. And this is to the point where it makes you laugh out loud.
"This is something of a nightmare" one character says, another say's "No this is where nightmare's are from!" This points at the fact that horror film's can be the cause of nightmares; again pointing at itself as a horror film and the fact that it is not real.
The film goes as far as changing the nature of characters completely, to fit filmic clichés. A character says; "Since when is Kurt an athlete, his a sociology major." in addition, the fact that the cliché of the fool, is actually clever-- as he grasps what it is happening before the other characters is yet again screaming to the audience "I'm a horror film and this is how you'll notice me!"
In the big reveal at the end, it shows that they need a certain stereotype to sacrifice. "The whore, the athlete, the scholar, the fool, and the virgin and for her, fate decides whether she dies or not." Even though this is shown not even be the true nature of the characters.
There are attempts for the characters to escape, and they literally put a barrier created by special effects (which is not remotely believable) when they try to leave the area. This is the film again saying, "I'm a film, of course there's no escaping the set, or there's no movie."
So why does film take all of conventions of horror, over-play to say I'm just a film?
We see the "puppeteers" as the controller's of the character's fate. Then we realize that there is something larger at stake, that the puppeteers are actually puppets, that the god's are controlling and in the end... but wait, there is something even larger than that. This is ultimately a metaphor for the filmmakers who control everything within the film and that us audience are the puppets-- they have the ability to scare and frighten us-- they are physically doing something to us, in which there is no escape! We are ultimately the voyeurs, and the watchers of cinema, but we are also the puppets of the filmmakers. and this is what makes it clever.
Horror has become very predictable and playing on all this predictability has resulted in something that is utterly unpredictable. The god's fist the emerges from the hole at the end is a metaphor for the filmmakers and the film's ability itself to "tear open" the nature of the horror genre and a film's affect itself.
and it is very entertaining to see!