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| I wonder what this movie is about. |
Stop me if you've heard this one before. A bunch of sexy college kids drive up into the isolated woods for a weekend retreat, to drink and do drugs and flirt with each other and do sexy college kid stuff. Except, while all that is happening, there's a whole other movie hiding within. The fourth wall isn't just porous or broken. It is non-existant. On the other side are technicians working in an underground bunker, plotting everything that happens in the other movie. These are the behind-the-scenes crew, and this is just another job for them. Just another production steeped in the blood of the impure. Hell, their man up above even says it. They are impure and will be cleansed... and they laugh at how intense he is. Jesus Christ, Mordecai, get it together. Whatever horror show these folks are planning, it's not going to end well for these kids. We need to warn them before it's too--
Stop me if you've heard this one before. A bunch of sexy college kids drive up into the isolated woods for a weekend retreat, to drink and do drugs and flirt with each other and do sexy college kid stuff. Except, their cabin's cellar is full of strange and mystical objects. The behind-the-scenes guys have a betting pool going, and now the kids are checking out all these things. We know what this is. We never watched Ghostbusters for the blog. Either of them. This is in the playbook of Gozer. Choose the form of the destructor, the Slashing Beast that will haunt. A ballerina? A ghost? A killer clown? The choice is made. Zombie redneck torture family. Everything that literal Chad feared about Tucker and Dale, given reanimated flesh. 40 minutes in, death has come for our college kids. May we accept this offering in humility and fear, even as a screaming blonde's head is severed. It soon becomes apparent that they are trapped; trapped in an isolated bubble, unseen puppet masters plotting their deaths. Plot they do, and die they do, until our final girl is screaming and suffering for the entertainment of... someone. Who? Who could it be--
Stop me if you've heard this one before. A bunch of sexy college kids drive up into the isolated woods for a weekend retreat, to drink and do drugs and flirt with each other and do sexy college kid stuff. Unfortunately, things take a darker turn while they're up there. One by one, they die horrible deaths, until only one girl is left standing at the end, victorious over the wild-eyed monsters trying to kill her. Except... that's not what happens. The stoner lived. He and our pure final girl escape into the underground. With no fourth wall and no other hope, they leap off of the screen and into the writer's room. Every monster, every magic being, every beast. Everything you ever were afraid of is down here, and the technicians are in a panic. They know. Failure to adhere to The Formula will mean certain doom. Certain doom comes, though. Our two kids get out. They know they're on the chopping block to appease something. They defy their fate. They break the chronic hysterisis, and purge the system.
Stop me if you've heard this one before. There are ancient things who demand entertainment in the form of blood. The technicians and behind-the-scenes folk offer them a variety of scenarios, all following the same theme. A bunch of sexy college kids drive up into the isolated woods for a weekend retreat, to drink and do drugs and flirt with each other and do sexy college kid stuff. Unfortunately, things take a darker turn while they're up there. One by one, they die horrible deaths, until only one girl is left standing at the end, victorious over the wild-eyed monsters trying to kill her. This is what happens. This is what's always happened. Time and time again this has happened, and the ancient ones have been appeased. That is not what happens here. Here, then, is a different sort of appeasement. Every monster ever made, rampaging throughout the facility, killing every technician in sight. Their machinations fail, and they're wiped out... except for their leader, who confronts the two remaining kids with the truth. If they don't die, the ancient ones revolt and it's the end of the world. They refuse. They defy their destiny, and the ancient ones rise up. The world ends.
Stop me if you've heard this one before. The ancient ones are us. The Cabin In The Woods has engineered a meta scenario in which a bunch of people meticuously set up the violent deaths of innocent college kids, all beholden to a bullshit set of rules and archetypes about who dies first and who can live to tell the tale. All of it to satisfy the whims of the creatures watching, who will end the world if they're not appeased. It's us. Us, the people watching people get arrows stuck through their throats or blended in their beds or killed by aliens from outer space. Hell, the director of the facility is Sigourney Weaver! A final girl herself who has transcended things in her survival, and now follows the rules. Cabin In The Woods is the Undertale of slasher films; much how that game twists the knife on player convention in RPGs, The Cabin In The Woods has you watching people who are calmly watching people be murdered. You might think it's super fucked up. It is! This is what confronting the Slashing Beast is all about! It's the realization that watching people get murdered for no reason is super fucked up! It's brilliant. Its ending is still satisfying, even to this blood-soaked ancient god. It's an absolutely wonderful self-aware horror film, and the best of the meta ones. Tucker and Dale comes close, though. We know more about ourselves now. We know how to confront the Slashing Beast. Now we can go back. Back to one of the keypoints where it began.
It's Halloween night. Let's finish this.
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