The Cabin in the Woods

Rating: 7/10 (23 October 2012)

When I heard the title I assumed it was a remake of some classic scary movie, but I investigated and found it was an original story, and I was also glad to see that the critics gave it a pretty good rating, four out of five stars, so I was hoping it would be a suitable amount of stars when I watched it. Basically five teenagers and college students, Dana Polk (Kristen Connolly), Jules Louden (Anna Hutchison) and her boyfriend Curt Vaughan (Chris Hemsworth), Holden McCrea (Jesse Williams) and Marty Mikalski (Fran Kranz) are heading for a vacation to a remote cabin in the woods. They are completely unaware that technicians are watching their every move and listening to their every word, because they are controlling what happens to them as they stay in the cabin, and they are not the only ones in the world, these technicians are creating bizarre scenarios in other countries such as Japan and Germany. The technicians are pumping in mind enhancing and influencing drugs so they will do things like be aware of things and have sex with each other, and they set up a diary in the basement so that one of them will read the pages and summon the Buckner family, all are dead and have become killer zombies. The events the teenagers are getting up are obviously being filmed, it is for the benefit of who the technicians are working for, like a reality show, so they are pleased to see Jules and Curt go outside to have sex, the sight of her breasts, and then them be attacked by the zombies, they kill Jules while Curt runs back to warn the others. Marty who is highly influenced by marijuana had paranoid suspicions before the strange things started happening, even finding hidden cameras in the walls, and he is sure that something is manipulating them, and then the zombies take him away. Dana, Holden and Curt get in the RV and plan to get away driving, heading through the tunnel that goes through the near hills, but the technicians set an explosion that collapses the rock into the tunnel, and then Curt thinks to use his motorbike to jump across to the other side of the raven, but an invisible security force field causes him to crash and fall to his death. Dana is sure now that Marty's suspicions were correct, and Holden is killed while driving in the RV back to the cabin, and crashing into the lake Dana gets away, the technicians are happy that they have completed their job and she is the last alive to be affected by fate, but in fact Marty is still alive. He finds her and shows her his discovery under the cabin of a secret trap door that goes down to an underground elevator, Marty has been immune to the technicians' attempts to influence him because of his high marijuana intoxication, and in the elevator the two remaining survivors pass numerous trapped monsters, all made to kill. Dana realises that the zombies up above were sent because of release activation, it was one of the objects in the cabin that determined they would be attacked by zombies, and when she and Marty reach the ground floor they explore the facility the monsters came from. The two of them get close to being caught by the security, but a large button is activated by Dana that releases all of the trapped monsters from their chambers, these include a psycho killer, a giant snake, a ghost, a merman and many others, and they start attacking the workers of the facility, including Steve Hadley (Bradley Whitford) and Wendy Lin (Amy Acker) who had been watching the cabin. After Dana unintentionally stabs technician Gary Sitterson (Let Me In's Richard Jenkins), she and Marty find a temple with large stone tablets with figure carvings that fill with blood when each intended victim has died, and they meet the Director (Sigourney Weaver) who explains that the technicians have been killing people across the world in sacrifice to appease the Ancient Ones who slumber below. She says that the certain archetypes are the ones who must die in a certain order, Jules was the whore and died first, Curt was the athlete and died second, Holden was the scholar and died third, Marty was meant to die fourth as the fool, and Dana as the virgin would have her fate decided by natural cause. The Director says that if this ritual is not carried out and there is no sacrifice made then these godlike creatures below will awake and the world will end because of the vast destruction by them, and she says that the rituals elsewhere have failed as well, so she gives the Dana choice to kill Marty and save the world, or face doom. In the end interruptions cause Dana to not give the theory of saving the world, the Director is killed by one of the zombies, Marty forgives Dana for threatening to shoot him, but they accept the fate the world will face, and see an amusing side that the earth needs a new race, and soon enough a giant hand crashes through the earth and crushes the cabin. The cast of young stars are fine, particularly Connolly and Kranz, and Hemsworth in his short time, and the actors playing the people watching are terrific being sadistic and enjoying their torture, the simple zombie attacking premise was good, villains watching them made it more interesting, but it got really good when you realise that the zombies are only one of the possibilities for how the victims could have been killed, the rooms of monsters was clever, and I wasn't expecting to see Weaver in it, overall it is a most worthwhile horror thriller. Very good!