are you even listening to me? THE CABIN IN THE WOODS thread (WARNING: SPOILERS! SPOILERS! SPOILEROS! SPOILIDAD!)

this was so awesome, the ultimate by-fans-for-fans horror movie, but unfortunately the whole hilarious Whitford/Jenkins/title card thing is gonna turn off a mainstream audience i think.

what audience would say no to that awesome title card???

― Hoo Nu Cookies (crüt), Sunday, April 15, 2012 11:19 PM (23 minutes ago) Bookmark

literally 5 people walked out of the movie at that point. it was only like 3 minutes into the film! i didnt get it at all, who the hell sits through 40 minutes of trailers just to go 'nah, i'm good' at the title card? maybe they were waiting for another movie to start or something....

they probably snuck in, lol

oh yeah, and my guess is "Killing Machine" was that giant mechanical scorpion thing

oh yeah, and my guess is "Killing Machine" was that giant mechanical scorpion thing

yeah, i just didn't see that on the betting borad

i liked how the puppeteers' bullshit moralizing about how they "chose" to die at the beginning really doesn't make any sense at all, between the so-called warning from the gas station dude (oh, Mordecai and the speaker-phone) and how they "choose" their form of death in the cellar

yeah, we were told the kids had to transgress in order to earn their punishment, but their transgression consisted of what, toying with some abandoned trinkets in a basement?

yeah...

they also had to be manipulated into the trangressions because the Old Ones expected a certain type of behaviour but in reality those people aren't so easily scaled down into obvious types. except maybe the stoner guy.

apparently they're marketing this as a wacky comedy now? just saw a version of the TV spot w some turd doing lame "comedy" reactions over top. on adult swim, so maybe special for that, i dunno. was horrible.

i think this para from the slate review is otm:

Perhaps because it cultivates this audience disengagement from the main characters’ fate—we’re rooting for our own entertainment, not their survival—Cabin in the Woods rarely comes across as more than a cleverly constructed meta-cinematic puzzle. It’s often funny and smart, but seldom deeply involving, and practically never scary. The last 10 minutes or so suffer from that problem not uncommon in high-concept movies, whereby the story paints itself into a conceptual corner and the forward motion flags.

(which is to say, i'm finding it more fun to think about this film and its various rabbitholes afterwards than i did to actually watch it.)

Sure, I'll concede that. The film chose the meta route above all else, and what it gained from that it lost on other fronts. Though ironically the only solution may have been another huge cliche - these beat up kids triumph over ultimate ancient evil, say, or that we're in some stupid dystopian world that can be changed. It's telegraphed early on that society deserves to crumble, so I credit the film for fulfilling the prophecy, as such.

Inconsistency unrelated to enjoyment: how can such a regular huge-scale save the world ritual that takes place across the globe and regularly puts dozens of young people in danger at the hands of supernatural creatures, a game of sorts run by several hundred staffers and scientists and soldiers, possibly remain a secret?

The most subtle joke of the film, possibly: that in the first few minutes it's revealed that the closest it has ever come to failure was chem department's fault, and that it turns out the turn of events in this scenario was largely chem's fault again.

Other subtle joke: when the "virgin" is making out with dude on the couch, pushes him away gently and says "I've never done this before." Then she gives this split second what the fuck am I talking about look when she realizes she's spouting nonsense.

her very first scene is about sleeping with her teacher!

(actually is that another subtle joke - the "athlete" is introduced by talking about textbooks, the "scholar" by catching the ball)

the whole hilarious Whitford/Jenkins/title card thing

The title card thing is a total lift from Eastbound & Down, in execution, soundtracking, and even aesthetic (filling the whole frozen frame)!

no, it's from Funny Games

In Italian, but you get the idea:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hgczUZXVKWA&feature=related

Inconsistency unrelated to enjoyment: how can such a regular huge-scale save the world ritual that takes place across the globe and regularly puts dozens of young people in danger at the hands of supernatural creatures, a game of sorts run by several hundred staffers and scientists and soldiers, possibly remain a secret?

well, we have to assume "massive government conspiracy", which seems sufficiently plausible to me for the purposes of meta-movie comedy

also agree completely with the excerpt from the slate review that lex posted. my emotional investment in the last ten minutes was practically zilch, and after the madhouse of the final act, it came as a bit of a letdown. didn't diminish my enjoyment of the film as a whole though.

But why would there even need to be a government conspiracy?

Because, like, those Japanese school girls? And all the other victors? Won't they just go home and tell everyone they conquered an ancient ghost spirit or giant ape? The gov conspiracy would therefore entail an elite squad killing all those Japanese kids to keep the secret secret. Which is possible (again, I'm just arguing for the sake of it, I liked the movie, and this aspect of it doesn't bother me for a second), but again begs the question: wouldn't it just be easier to kill a bunch of people then rely on this faulty Rube Goldberg scenario?

i don't think the survivors need to be killed. so long as they don't know anything about the involvement of the puppetmasters, their story is that they successfully defeated a ghost or demon or kevin or w/e. people tell crazy stories every day, after all. just provides more belief fodder for the next round of young victims.

i got the impression that the sacrifice's mechanics weren't entirely the result of the puppetmaster's desires. they pine for the simplicity of throwing a virgin in a volcano, after all. we don't really get any answer as to why things are the way they are, but that's okay, imo. an unanswered question isn't necessarily a plot hole. i assumed it was a product of the old ones desires, bureaucracy and the way we now process fear in our culture. the scenarios had to resemble horror movies because horror movies are the "myths" we now use to relate to the idea of supernatural terror and evil.

strike on or the other of those "after alls"

Kiko's spirit will live in the happy frog

lol at complaints about that this became less satisfying in "the last 10 minutes" [aka after the sacrifice is well and truly botched] - u r grumpy old ones do u see?

Kiko's spirit will live in the happy frog

I smell sequel!

Hell Comes To Frogtown!

lol at complaints about that this became less satisfying in "the last 10 minutes" [aka after the sacrifice is well and truly botched] - u r grumpy old ones do u see?

oh sure, but that's not a get-out-of-jail-free card. big exposition scene that reveals only what we already know plus a rote moment of crisis with no possible good outcome = a dud of an ending no matter what the genre or theme. plus shouldn't we old ones be thrilled that we finally got to smash the world at the end?

lol. best title card use since Drag Me to Hell, imo!

― Nhex, Sunday, April 15, 2012 10:21 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

I thought the same thing! I enjoyed this movie much more than I expected to.

the more i think about it the more i think "sorry i let the werewolf attack you...and ended the world" is one of my fav all time last lines

holy shit, hell comes to frogtown! THE DANCE OF THE THREE SNAKES

i enjoyed this movie. my wife and i saw this and hunger games on the same day and i didn't realize til this morning that the dude who plays gale and the "jock" from this movie are brothers.

CITW was much better than hunger games btw.

Which one is Gale? Is he the bro who's in the background of that movie for, like, a minute? Must be, because the other one is Peeta, right?

Silly Hunger Games. Could have used more Kevin or Reptilius.

i think this was commented on above but it was weird to me that this was being reviewed as a satire of horror movies because as a satire it was pretty weak. "horror movies have stale character archetypes" is not much of a zing. but it worked as a straight-up comedy so whatever.

yeah gale is the dude who's back at home, he's more important in the rest of the series.

richard jenkins and bradley whitford were A+ in this movie btw

It's no satire. It's more subversive takedown.

how so

old ones are the horror audience; puppetmasters are horror filmmakers; pain, gore and death are the "sacrifices" offered by the genre to our baser selves

re: satire i loved the "remember when we could just do the girl and a volcano bit" har har

Yeah, as I mentioned above: we, the audience, pay to see innocent people killed in creative ways to appease ancient audience pleased by the same cliches we accept again and again. Real life audience on the losing end of this.

old ones are the horror audience; puppetmasters are horror filmmakers; pain, gore and death are the "sacrifices" offered by the genre to our baser selves

with this in mind, another way to go would have been to have the "puppetmasters" cheating and just showing horror movies to the old ones to keep them mollified. "look, we sacrified like 11 kids in this year's ritual. it's called friday the 13th. no just be good and go back to sleep for 12 months." they try to keep the gods in the dark about the subterfuge, but something happens and they rise up, hilarity ensues.

I really want to read a Geoffrey O'Brien review of this.

There are prob. tons of essays which dwell upon "the horror genre as a necessary ritual", but I keep flashing back to his chapter in The Phantom Empire, re: horror as a genre where quality may be welcome but simply isn't necessary - as long as certain rules are adhered to, the genre's central ritual has been performed well.

otm, and it helps explain horror fandom's happy acceptance of the most wretched drek, so long as it's "done right".

important to keep in mind that this isn't really unique to the horror genre, though. action movies, thrillers, sci-fi, comedies and even romances are similar. all that's really important is that the right sort of spectacle or reward is offered. this is even more apparent in genre fiction, where the production costs are lower.

Though horror films are the only ones that specifically trade in sadism and blood. Those aspects are ancillary to action flicks and rom-coms and whatever. In a lot of horror films (most horror films?) the promise of blood and death is the draw. I mean, tons of action films are violent, but the creative kills scenes themselves are not the specific draw. Hence the advent/rise of torture porn, wherein the elaborate, prolonged, horribly graphic kills are the main attraction, much as explicit sex is the main attraction in conventional porn.

Like, there are "rituals" to all these genre works, sure, in the form of cliches or whatever, but I'd suggest the rituals in horror films reflect the most poorly on the audience.

Yeah - you could extrapolate it to pretty much every genre, though it does resonate specifically w/ horror; I don't know any rom-com fanatics who spend every Saturday with three nigh-random dvds...

oh yeah, horror fandom is intense. it's like metal fandom that way. but sci-fi fandom is v similar, and that doesn't typically revolve around death/killing at all.

my point was that it's a little to easy, imo, to get caught up in the specialness of horror's "sacrificial offering". lots of popular genres exist to provide a certain type of reward (or punishment, perhaps).

edit: "a little too easy"

"horror as a genre where quality may be welcome but simply isn't necessary - as long as certain rules are adhered to, the genre's central ritual has been performed well"

Yes you'd think the Old Ones (as genre aficionados) might have decided against bringing on the apocalypse, given the undeniably spectacular upside to their ritual going wrong.

Maybe the Old Ones just really hate that whole Lovecraft thing.

Meantime:

http://io9.com/5902424/everything-you-didnt-know-about-cabin-in-the-woods

Though horror films are the only ones that specifically trade in sadism and blood.

r e e a l l l l y? -- 'sadistic' always used to be in the top three adjectives used to negatively describe crime fiction and spy fiction; i think maybe it's a thing lost sight of in the later progress of those genres but there's so much of it buried on some level. how i hate sex murderers, thought morse.

I mean, tons of action films are violent, but the creative kills scenes themselves are not the specific draw.

hm.

Hence the advent/rise of torture porn, wherein the elaborate, prolonged, horribly graphic kills are the main attraction, much as explicit sex is the main attraction in conventional porn.

think about the work 'as' is doing here

"hence the advent/rise of fx porn, wherein the lovingly crafted computer-generated effects shots are the main attraction, much as explicit sex is the main attraction in conventional porn"