Cabin in the Woods review

[ChiggyvonRichthofen]

I also have issues with glib "everybody deserves to die" assertions in fiction. Anyone who feels justified in cooperating with the extermination of the entire species based off the dubious actions of one group is a real jerk. It also seems unlikely that two people, portrayed as if they were thinking relatively clearly, both apparently could think of no one that they wanted to go on living. If you buy into the situation and are still able to function (neither guaranteed, but both seem to apply in this case), I would think that the natural human reaction would be to think of a loved one- whether it be a significant other, a parent, a sibling, or even just a friend- and make your death meaningful for them. The fact that neither did that is kind of problematic.

I think the reason for this is that Whedon and Goddard gave priority to meta over plot. Ideally, your allegory/allusion/metaphor will be seamless and perfectly illustrate your point/theme while also working well in the movie. In this case, that didn't happen.

My reading of the meta-point is that if the creators/production crew of horror movies ("the company") become complacent and lazy enough to serve up nothing other than cliched crap, then the audiences (or studio, depending on how you want to read it) who hold the real power will eventually turn on them. If no one can put out a good product, then the horror movie industry (the world) deserves what's coming to it. I think that perfectly fits the whole "deconstruction of horror" stuff, it just didn't translate into a perfectly satisfying plot point within the movie.

[Admiral X]

Ash from Evil Dead survived after all, so maybe he was the virgin when they went camping? That's one of my headcanons, anyway.

Except that the woman who is the one to suffer the infamous tree rape was his girlfriend.

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

Bad news, I'm still alive.

*hugs*

I know that feel bro xD T_T

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

Why I didn't like this movie, in one word, is Apathy.
The control room, despite any protestations, are largely apathetic about the fate of these teenagers.
The teenagers are apathetic about the fate of the entire world.
Even look at Mordecai, who's sincere convictions about the dark gods are dismissed with laughter. It's a very successfully executed theme.

My question then is, if everyone in this movie is apathetic, why should I care about it?

[Madner Kami]

Ash from Evil Dead survived after all, so maybe he was the virgin when they went camping? That's one of my headcanons, anyway.

Except that the woman who is the one to suffer the infamous tree rape was his girlfriend.

Yes, but think about it. Cabin has a rape-tree too and the cabin looks eerily like the one from the Evil Dead, plus the entire cast of Evil Dead is a poster-child for the sacrifical formula used in Cabin. It suggests the events of Evil Dead did indeed happen, which leaves only one conclusion. Also, remember, Ash survived three Evil Dead movies and we never see him having sex or it being implied in any of them.

[FakeGeekGirl]

Ash from Evil Dead survived after all, so maybe he was the virgin when they went camping? That's one of my headcanons, anyway.

Except that the woman who is the one to suffer the infamous tree rape was his girlfriend.

Yes, but think about it. Cabin has a rape-tree too and the cabin looks eerily like the one from the Evil Dead, plus the entire cast of Evil Dead is a poster-child for the sacrifical formula used in Cabin. It suggests the events of Evil Dead did indeed happen, which leaves only one conclusion. Also, remember, Ash survived three Evil Dead movies and we never see him having sex or it being implied in any of them.

Also, both in Cabin in the Woods and the usual execution of this trope, the definition of Virgin is a little bit ... loose. The Final Girl is often a literal Virgin, but not always. The final girl in Friday the Thirteenth Part II is implied to have a sexual relationship with her boyfriend, but they don't have sex that weekend because she's on her period. The Final Girl is sometimes a virgin only in the sense of the Virgin / Whore complex - she might not be a literal virgin, but she doesn't have sex in the middle of the woods or a dingy house that isn't hers like "the whore." So she's still on the "respectable" side of the equation, which may be what matters to the ancient evil (all though ... I am kind of surprised the ancient evil are not more strict about this rule especially since they have an evil unicorn as one of their minions and unicorns are famously associated with virgins in lore).

Of course the Virgin/ Whore complex is virtually never applied to men so that might sink the idea of Ash = the Virgin for this universe, but looking at Evil Dead in isolation it's a refreshing subversion of the A Man Is Not a Virgin trope since even if he's not a literal virgin Ash's manliness / competence is not tied to sexual conquest.

[Rocketboy1313]

Why I didn't like this movie, in one word, is Apathy.
The control room, despite any protestations, are largely apathetic about the fate of these teenagers.
The teenagers are apathetic about the fate of the entire world.
Even look at Mordecai, who's sincere convictions about the dark gods are dismissed with laughter. It's a very successfully executed theme.

My question then is, if everyone in this movie is apathetic, why should I care about it?

Everyone in the control room is concerned about the end of the world. They all die fighting nightmare monsters trying to stop the end of the world.

Chris Hemsworth fights to save his friends the entire time. The stoner is the only guy who is like, "f the world" to the point where if not for a werewolf he would have died and the world would be saved, virgin not wanting to kill stoner because she cares about her friends.

What are you talking about Apathy? Everyone in this movie cares about something.

[Beastro]

Haven't watched the review yet because I dislike this show so much I find myself reluctant to even watch a video of Chuck recap it.

Why I didn't like this movie, in one word, is Apathy.
The control room, despite any protestations, are largely apathetic about the fate of these teenagers.
The teenagers are apathetic about the fate of the entire world.
Even look at Mordecai, who's sincere convictions about the dark gods are dismissed with laughter. It's a very successfully executed theme.

My question then is, if everyone in this movie is apathetic, why should I care about it?

I found it repellent. The ending was the worst, however, and pushed me into outright repulsion.

It's a movie I'd never watch again because of the mentality of protagonists at that stage.

What are you talking about Apathy? Everyone in this movie cares about something.

For me it's not so much what is shown (until the ending), but a general feeling that pervades the movie that hit me as one of the worst strains of nihilism.

What's annoying is the idiot stoner touches on the importance of collapse and disaster in the vein of how forest fires must happen in one way or another and they should happen often or else all the built of detritus produces terrible large scale ones that wind up causing more damage than 100 smaller ones.

The problem with the movie is that this is an extinction level event, and the fucking idiots at the end don't give a damn because if God forbid they'd die and everyone else lives, everyone else has to go down with them if they're going to die regardless of what happens.

[SuccubusYuri]

In what is probably an unintended interpretation, I sort of look at it as the idiot becoming a worse version of the company.

If we assume that Chuck has it right, the the Ancient Ones are really kind of bored and want out of the deal, why do they need to go to elaborate measures to fuck with the rituals? If they are so massively powerful, why don't they just shrug and wake up? If they are this controlling force for the creations, at least.

More likely it should seem that the Ancient Ones are just as much prisoners of the contract as humanity is. "No, Dave, we AGREED with that Minos idiot that a handful of kids would sate our lust for blood. We can't back out on that, HR would be all over our asses." In that sense he's just the new company, enforcing their will by betraying his kind.

[Madner Kami]

In what is probably an unintended interpretation, I sort of look at it as the idiot becoming a worse version of the company.

If we assume that Chuck has it right, the the Ancient Ones are really kind of bored and want out of the deal, why do they need to go to elaborate measures to fuck with the rituals? If they are so massively powerful, why don't they just shrug and wake up? If they are this controlling force for the creations, at least.

More likely it should seem that the Ancient Ones are just as much prisoners of the contract as humanity is. "No, Dave, we AGREED with that Minos idiot that a handful of kids would sate our lust for blood. We can't back out on that, HR would be all over our asses." In that sense he's just the new company, enforcing their will by betraying his kind.

In the least it's implied, but imo it's clear towards the end, that the monsters are actively interefering with the ritual. Think about how a bunch of locked-up-in-one-room children-girls in a school can find information on how to banish an evil spirit by standing in a circle and chanting something. Either that is common knowledge and thus the evil spirit wasn't a threat to begin with (thus invalidating the notion that Japan has a spotless record, because this would be the dumbest oversight imaginable) or they got the information without actually having concievable access to it, other than the spirit itself. Or, if you want it more in-your-face, how the Buckner-zombie kills the director instead of everyone else in the room, which would have incidentally completed the ritual, thus eliminating the means to complete the ritual and thus awakening the Ancient Ones. This leaves only one conclusion: The Ancient Ones are fucking around with us, as they were always in control of the situation.