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

otm, though i can't let that go without raising a glass to richard jenkins

One niggling plot hole, though: thry had heart monitors watching all five of 'em, so why were they surprised when stoner dude turned up alive?

I kind of thought that he worked out there something monitoring him and tore it out but I'm making a huge leap there. That whole twist wasn't handled as well as it should have been. Though having the final girl fighting on the dock on those screens as everyone was partying was pretty great.

xpost I think the intern is holding a sign that says "I'm just the intern." May be an in-joke I don't get re: the actor.

Did you catch how many of the scenarios/horror movie cameos pop out of the elevators? Yes, the Angry Molesting Tree makes an appearance, but so does the elevator full of blood from "The Shining."

Still want to know how every international scenario was able to best its villain. You'd think this would be a little less convoluted, given what is at stake. There is a throw-away line like "this was a lot easier when we could just throw someone into a volcano." Well, why don't they? I did like the meta-joke that the reason all the other countries fail is that they are not good at horror, but that doesn't quite explain it.

Double-metagag when they imply the exploding tunnel ruse was messed up by something "upstairs," which briefly implies God. But in this film, the lab is downstairs, so by upstairs they mean the stoner fiddling around with the electrical box. Which they didn't know at the time. And kind of makes for a hilarious God-metaphor.

I used to read Wells a bunch, and I was a regular commenter, but to date that is the only site/forum that made me say "fuck this place," leave and never looked back. The dude is an ass.

Jeff Wells is NOT a critic, just sayin'

this was grebt imo. much funnier than BRIDESMAIDS and not much scarier, but great great fun. the whiteboard and the various horror cameos were brill. sugarplum fairy and Fornicus were champs during the free-for-all.

was kinda bummed that the *SPOILER ALERT* merman *END SPOILER* wasn't ultimately scarier-lookin' but there's no question it had to show. blowhole made up for unthreatening cartoony look.

"am i on speakerphone?"

I dug this well enough, although hardly the "game changer, OMG 5 stars" that some press has painted it. Lots of fun, but *MILD SPOILER I GUESS* the bird hitting the force field in plain sight early on really spoiled the Evel Knievel attempt later as it totally telegraphed the outcome, whereas if that had just been allowed to happen then I'd have been much more WAU *END SPOILER*. Merman blowhole was A+ though, as was speakerphone lulz and as mentioned the attention to detail was v engaging. I did fuckin' love the evil Hellraiser style dude-with-puzzle-ball (is this a thing? I don't recall seeing it before).

Can't say enough good things about the wolf's head scene.

Thor was about to solve the puzzle ball in the cellar.

*MILD SPOILER I GUESS* the bird hitting the force field in plain sight early on really spoiled the Evel Knievel attempt later as it totally telegraphed the outcome, whereas if that had just been allowed to happen then I'd have been much more WAU *END SPOILER*.

That's what I said on the other thread. They blew an opp for another "Deep Blue Sea"-level gag.

I'm totally seeing this again this afternoon, this time with my wife, who has no clue. Before I went the first time, she was all, oh, I won't ruin it for you. So last night I asked her if she knew what was going on in the movie, and she's all, yeah, a bunch of kids go out to a cabin, and a whole bunch of horrible stuff happens to them. I said, you have no idea, and immediately booked a sitter. Though of course, when I saw it on Friday at noon, I was sitting in front of an extended Mexican family: grandma, two parents, possibly an uncle, four kids, the youngest maybe as old as four. I wonder what in the world they got out of it.

>Thor was about to solve the puzzle ball in the cellar.

Should've been clearer: I remembered the ball from earlier in the film, but wonder if this character and device are from the wider world of fantasy/horror than just this movie? It's a clear riff on Hellraiser, but was pretty striking visually and I liked the puzzle master's baleful gaze.

*SPOILER* Josh, spot on, regarding DBS. It seemed an odd misstep, and Thor's "don't worry, I'll get help and we'll kick their ass" speech would have been much more satisfying if his demise had been allowed to play out as a total suprise *END*

Potential cursed basement artifacts iirc included the puzzle ball, jewelry box, conch shell (I assume to call the merman!), mirror ...

Conch was def for the merman.

Pinhead and only Pinhead, I supsect, though I think I get what you mean. The motif and imagery resonate really strong in the moment, the, I dunno, twenty seconds it's confronted it in the CUBE prison.

Yeah, that shot held on the puzzle master's face was a successfully creepy moment, I thought. Rest of the film is a lot of fun, but barely a shiver raised throughout.

I'm of two minds w/r/t to the force field scene - it would have made a fine DBS type scene, w/ say the forcefield showing more strongly (brighter) to key the audience into what it really was and maybe a quick cut to Whitford saying "At least the forcefield isn't glitching, god knows we don't want a repeat of '05."

On the other hand, it's entirely in line w/ the movie's m.o., all the tropes underlined beforehand, the audience knowing ahead of the kids that the end-of-the-second-act uplift is gonna prove false and Thor's heroism is gonna falter, w/ our POV, by that part of the movie, pretty close to the middle-management down in the bunker.

Still want to know how every international scenario was able to best its villain. You'd think this would be a little less convoluted, given what is at stake. There is a throw-away line like "this was a lot easier when we could just throw someone into a volcano." Well, why don't they? I did like the meta-joke that the reason all the other countries fail is that they are not good at horror, but that doesn't quite explain it.

my assumption was that the ritual takes place according to a certain occult logic. there has to be a contest of some kind, and the form of the content has to reflect the ways in which we deal with our terrors. i.e., the contests have to resemble horror movies, because that's the form our anxieties now take. this isn't stated clearly, but it's the impression i got.

On the other hand, it's entirely in line w/ the movie's m.o.

this is true, but like i said in the other thread, the movie would have benefitted, i think, by being a bit more sparing with certain information. the eagle gag is a prime example. would have been a lot more fun if we'd been able to wonder for a second whether or not he might make it. and the exploding hawk scene wasn't that great to begin with.

[*BIG SPOILER*] I also wish they hadn't telegraphed the sacrifice theme and presence of the old ones quite so clearly. I had a pretty good idea what was going on from the film's first images (the drawings and paintings of sacrifices seen reflected in blood during the opening credits). Thought it would have been nice if the watchers' larger motives were allowed to remain a bit mysterious. We knew everything about what was going on before the movie was half over, and that left the second half a bit flat, imo. Funny, but never terribly suspenseful or surprising.[*END SPOILER*]

eagle, hawk, whatever

It's a tough balance, really. If they had saved it all for the end, the reveal would have been a bunch of expository talking. Then again, the Celebrity Cameo was mostly just expository talking, anyway, so who knows?

According to the imdb, someone asked the director after the first screening if there would be a sequel, and he was basically, did you just see the movie?

Like I said, seeing this again today. Anything you all want me to keep an eagle/hawk eye out for that you may have missed?

Puzzle Sphere = Fornicus, Lord of Bondage and Pain
Music Box = Sugarplum Fairy
Journal = The Buckners
Conch = Merman
Necklace = ?

no idea who the necklace might be connected with. and we have to assume that the basement was FULL of stuff we never saw, other items linked to the unicorn, the giant snake and bat, china doll killers, gorebot, etc.

also, didn't it seem that there were a great many more monsters in storage than were reflected on the betting board?

there definitely were more nightmares and sight gags in storage than we saw on the board. from what was on the board i'm quite sad we missed out on the wendigo/yeti. and the snowman.

Old school film reels were prob the werewolf, and there were def china dolls in there somewhere

forgot the film reels! okay yeah gonna have to see this again.

"actually I think we should split up... we can cover more ground that way"

from the pants-shitting thread:

http://i.imgur.com/BQaLg.jpg

husband's bulge

another view of the whiteboard

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b350/YoNoSe/IMG_0308.jpg

okay, what with "dolls" and "unicorn", that seems to cover just about everything we saw in the film. i think? except maybe the death machine...

Just back from second viewing. The necklace has some sort of spider on it.

Fave throwaway gag may still be stoner locking his car through his open car window. Also, noticed that the Ancient Ones give a little warning rumble when the Fool "dies," because they know he's not dead. Another gag is that when the werewolf sneaks up on her at the end, emerging from the darkness, the first thing you see are its teeth, which recall a certain capital A Alien ... which given the context, may not be a coincidence.

Do we see the Snowman in the assault? Wendigo/Yeti is a separate category, so is Snowman, like, a snowman? And do we see Sexy Witches?

i thought this was a bit shit.

well, total awkward boring shit for the first half (bar a couple of amusing office-worker style jokes in the lab), and then after the telephone call it switches into something much more entertaining and funny, but the first half was too long and the second half a bit too rushed. the elevator scene was the best! i would've rather more of the film was set in that giant pandora's box computer game area. the snippet of the japanese schoolgirls defeating their monster was great too, it made me want to see that film instead.

didn't feel there was much surprise value, the meta aspect is made clear straight away. the zombies were so perfunctory and it was impossible to be scared, which i know wasn't the point but you just ended up not caring much about anything in the first half.

~thee olde ones~ seemed a bit of a heavy premise for a basically good-humoured film.

felt a bit weird watching it after the hunger games which tbh "did" reality tv much more creatively.

Reality TV is absolutely the wrong touchstone for this but seriously if u enjoyed the hunger games more I just...

well it's not a direct comparison given how different they are, but by clever meta horror standards i thought cabin in the woods was pretty lacking

Cabin in the Woods seriously has nothing at all to do with reality tv.

I know this kind of horror film in and of itself isn't particularly groundbreaking, and if you went with it or didn't, that's cool, but to say it was lacking in clever meta horror standards feels a bit wtf to me.

There's nothing reality TV at all about this, though I concede it's a bit subtle. The "audience," as such, are The Ancient Ones. All the TV monitors are confusing, because it makes it seem like a broadcast, when in fact the proceedings are being ... monitored.

This movie is meta as fuck. We watch the ritualized actions (cliches) of horror films because they fulfill a primal desire, so here comes a movie that is literally about watching the ritualized actions of horror to appease something ancient. And we watch. Well, some of us do.

so you're saying there were no echoes at all of reality tv in a space where participants are bugged, technicians rig the setting to produce the most entertaining/titillating outcome and everything is captured on camera? riiiiight. it doesn't have to be an actual reality tv show to contain those very obvious overtones.

it's really really not about reality tv. It's about the experience of watching horror movies

to say it was lacking in clever meta horror standards feels a bit wtf to me.

i didn't say it lacked these, i said it wasn't very effective at doing stuff with them.

Yeah. It's not My Little Eye. If anything it's about viewers expectations for fictional Horror, not reality. They have to manipulate and influence the characters so they fit into the boxes the Old Ones expect and act stupid enough to lose.

ah right, well fair enough. would love to see a list of those btw. xpost

even typing out the "old ones" makes me cringe a bit. i mean, it's obviously about watching horror films as well, but the link is that it's about the audience gaze - how we expect to be entertained.

it just didn't do it very well! it makes its point clearly enough but not compellingly. (i mean, i enjoyed the second half but it could've been much better and the first half was just an extended longueur to set up the second half)

There's nothing reality TV at all about this, though I concede it's a bit subtle. The "audience," as such, are The Ancient Ones. All the TV monitors are confusing, because it makes it seem like a broadcast, when in fact the proceedings are being ... monitored.

― Josh in Chicago, Sunday, April 15, 2012 7:22 PM (13 minutes ago) Bookmark

yeah. and i think how condemnatory you read the movie as being depends on what you think of the ancient ones' need to be fed cliches - i said in post-2005 thread that i saw it as a gentle ribbing of the horror audience, but some see it as more damning

i think lex sort of has a point in that "reality TV" doesn't have to be explicitly invoked in order to justify mentioning the implicit similarities. it's about the idea of sacrifice, youth being destroyed (very literally in this case) in order to satisfy some primal need. this makes it a fine meta commentary on the function of kids in horror movies and the appetites of horror audiences, but it doesn't seem unreasonable to also draw connections between this and the function of shows like big brother and jersey shore.

though that's more an associative tangent than anything the film is apparently trying to address

yeah, but it seems unfair to compare to Hunger Games, which is (in a pretty cackhanded way) explicitly about reality TV.

well yes there are parallels but it's not "doing" reality tv which is what he said. There wasn't anything particularly creative about The Hunger Games either (especially considering it's premise was a total rip-off) but that's a whole other can of worms

going ON here

Yeah, but you already know there's something weird going on, from minute-one, and by the time, way down the road, they do bring in the electrified fence as a plot point, I doubt anyone would still be wondering what's going on, let alone be surprised something strange is going on. Revealing the fence early on ruins the gag later. I mean, no biggie, it's just an unforced error.

Did catch something I somehow missed the first two times, that after she kills the zombie in the basement with a knife, they send her a little electric shock that makes her drop the knife.

it's not a gag later. you're meant to be that far ahead of the characters by now, and filled with dread at how they're going to fuck up, not startled.

that's true, but the existence of the sky-fence would have come as a nice surprise during the escape attempt, had not the useless eagle gag spoiled it

189 posts later...

SPOILERS DISCUSSION

I thought it was more effective foreshadowing than ruining surprise. If you wern't told about the shield beforehand then it'd be dumb having it pop up during tha scene for the first time, it would be as if they'd just written ANOTHER thing that can go wrong, as opposed to the lead forgetting that no, running's not gonna work. action vs horror or something

stalemate. we need to have somebody not read this thread is what we need to do, and then they go and watch the version of the movie without the eagle and report back, compare notes is the idea.

I want a print of this:

http://www.nerdist.com/2014/09/hey-l-a-celebrate-joss-whedon-with-this-weekends-gallery1988-show/

http://www.nerdist.com/wp-content/uploads/photo-gallery/Gallery-1988-Whedon_08.png

rewatched this again, just as fun the second time around. kinda agree the thing with the bird is unnecessary.

Just watched it, finally. SO FUN.

― emil.y, Tuesday, June 3, 2014