Film Reviews: The Cabin In The Woods (15)

MUCH has happened to movie horror since Joss Whedon first raised the stakes with Buffy The Vampire Slayer on TV. Now he revisits old haunts with The Cabin In The Woods: except instead of teenage vampires and demons, he takes on the most implacable of horror archetypes, the slasher killer.

Since Whedon is also shepherding the Marvel heroes into cinemas this month, it may sound as if he has been the busiest man in showbiz apart from Michael Fassbender, but in fact this film, co-written by Whedon and directed by his Buffy collaborator Drew Goddard, has been on the shelf for almost two years, thanks to legal complications caused by the near-bankruptcy of its parent studio MGM. In the meantime, the film has gathered near-mythic status amongst Whedon’s following. It also doesn’t hurt that one of the film’s leads is Chris Hemsworth, who was unknown when he signed up for Cabin but now swings some clout since he went on to star in Thor.

The plot set-up is deliberately familiar: a lakeside getaway is booked by five students, with one-per-person character quirks. Marty (Fran Kranz) is the wisecracking pothead; Jules (Anna Hutchison) the hot sexy girl; Holden (Jesse Williams) is the geeky one; Dana (Kristen Connolly) is the good girl, and Curt (Hemsworth) is the alpha male. In the first half hour, they drink beer, have a nosey around, smoke dope and play truth games. Later there is a creaking cellar, a diary left by one of the cabin’s previous dysfunctional occupants, and a two-way mirror.

However, there’s also a bigger picture, hinted at when the film cuts to two white collar workers (Richard Jenkins and Bradley Whitford) preparing to broadcast some kind of Big Brother TV show. Guess who the stars of this reality show are? And apparently the programme has a worldwide franchise, because as Jenkins and Bradford unleash zombies on the cabin, somewhere else in the world a clutch of Japanese schoolgirls are being terrorised in a J-horror movie style.

To go on would deprive you of plot turns that even the film’s trailer doesn’t manage to give away, but it’s fair to say this isn’t just a horror, but one of those winking, meta-exercises in formula apparently written by a very sarcastic fanboy.

As the diminishing returns of the Scream series demonstrate, this kind of self-consciousness can be a fresh tool or a lazy crutch, but Whedon and Goddard now raise a third possibility – unbearably self-congratulatory regarding their own cleverness.

The third act of this would-be Rubik’s Cube of a film is, frankly, a tortuous mess, reminiscent of the end of Mel Brooks’ Blazing Saddles when different movies start invading each other’s sets. Any way you slash it, the idea of the characters’ fates being determined by the “rules” feels like a well-worn cliché, and although the film toys with deconstructing why we need our repetitious, ritualistic fright-fests, it never really digs into this, its most interesting idea.

In the end, this deus ex machina is all machinery and no grease. Despite pumping out red herrings and twists, you don’t experience much in the way of suspense, shocks or smart, satisfying kicks. At best, The Cabin In The Woods is a horror halfway house. «

On general release