REVIEW OF THE CABIN IN THE WOODS

About The Movie:

In a large, industrial facility, two
technicians named Richard Sitterson (Richard Jenkins) and Steve Hadley (Bradley Whitford) are getting ready for an unknown operation.

Meanwhile,
five friends; Dana (Kristen
Connolly), Curt (Chris Hemsworth), Jules (Anna Hutchison), Marty (Fran Kranz), and Holden (Jesse Williams), drive out to a remote
cabin in the woods for a vacation, supposedly owned by Curt's cousin. As they
get to the area, they stop for gas and meet the harbinger Mordecai who owns the
gas station. After giving them gas and insulting Jules, he calls the
technicians to inform them about the visitors' arrival. When they get to the
cabin, the technicians along with Wendy Lin (Amy Acker) and other workers get ready to initiate their
operation.

After finding
a strange one-way mirror, the friends begin to party by drinking, smoking and
playing Truth or Dare. While playing, a cellar door
opens abruptly and Dana, after being dared to explore, find mysterious
artifacts. Meanwhile, the technicians begin to bet on what actions the teen's
will take. Dana eventually reads a diary about a strange family and reads a spell in Latin which raises the family
from the dead.

The
technicians then alter the teens' behavior by administering hormones through
the air ducts. Curt and Jules go outside to have sex and when they begin, then
they are attacked by the zombies and Jules is decapitated. Marty begins to feel as
if he were being controlled by "puppeteers"
and meets the fleeing Curt outside. The friends attempt to barricade against
the zombies. They are locked in their rooms and Marty is taken and presumably
killed. Holden helps Dana escape by the one-way mirror and they and Curt escape
the cabin to head to the vehicle.

The
technicians begin to worry when a glitch causes the cave entrance to not blow
up, giving the survivors a chance to escape. Sitterson is able to fix the
problem, which blows up the cave cutting off the teens escape route. Curt
attempts to use his motorbike to jump the gap between the exit road but is
killed instantly by a force field which causes him to crash and fall.

Holden and
Dana leave with the RV and attempt to find another exit with Dana now believing
Marty's talk of "puppeteers". As they are driving though, a zombie is
able to kill Holden and they crash into the lake while Dana escapes. The zombie
approaches her and begins to attack her while the technicians drink in
celebration that they have completed the "ritual". The party soon stops
when a phone call from "upstairs" informs them that Marty survived
and caused the glitch. Just as Dana is about to be killed, Marty rescues her by
tripping the zombie and knocking it into the water.

While the
others were trying to escape, Marty came across a wire box in which he is able
to access an elevator. As they take it down to the center where the technicians
are they pass by a number of monsters and realize that the
"puppeteers" were letting them decide their fate. They are stopped by
a guard but are able to knock him out and escape. SWAT teams are sent to kill
them and Dana and Marty are cornered. In a last effort to escape, they release
all the monsters who kill off all the SWAT teams and raid the base, killing all
personnel. Sitterson stays alive and escapes by a secret trap door but is
stabbed accidentally by Dana who was able to find the other entrance.

Dana and
Marty find a large crypt with strange tablets and then meet the
"Director" (Sigourney Weaver). She then tells them the
reason for the ritual is to appease gods called "The Ancient Ones"
who live beneath the facility and want the sacrifice of five young people of
the genre: The Athlete, The Whore, The Scholar, The Fool and The Virgin. If the
ritual is not completed, the Ancient Ones will rise and destroy the world. To
complete it, Marty must first die though Dana could live.

Dana is
tempted to shoot Marty, but does not in the end. The Director attacks Marty and
tries to kill him while Dana is attacked by a werewolf.
Marty saves her, but the Director gets the upper hand and steals the gun from
him. Before she can shoot though, a zombie from the first batch kills her and
Marty knocks them off the platform.

Marty sits
and comforts Dana while also lighting a joint. He then remarks that this course
of action might be for the best, that it might be better for someone else to
get a chance at life. Morning comes and Marty and Dana hold each other as a
hand from one of the Ancient Ones rises up and destroys the facility and cabin
as the movie ends.

What Is Good About The Movie:

When a hottie, a virgin, an egghead,
a jock, and a stoner walk into an isolated cottage for a college getaway
weekend in The Cabin in the Woods, a wised-up viewer would do well
to ask, What is this, a joke? But the makers of this smoothly clever, faintly
self-congratulatory project, choose not to answer. Instead they offer
entertainment with the impressive Rubik's Cube-y structure of something new — a
contortion well represented on Cabin movie posters — and the
soul of something safe and square. In these Woods, the honest terror of real
horror is never a threat. Even when all hell breaks loose, that hell is cushioned
by air quotes, with the audience buckled up for benign, heady fun.

What Is Bad About The Movie:

The revelation that Others are busy
monitoring our cast of young people as they shriek in the dark woods — a
reality hinted at even in the movie's trailer — deepens the mystery. So does
the appearance of Six Feet Under's incomparable Richard Jenkins and The
West Wing's snappy Bradley Whitford, whose involvement in the tale will
eventually explain the movie's tagline: ''You think you know the story.'' These
two experienced actors provide the film's adult-level entertainment.

What does it take these days to really, seriously horrify the
target audience for The Cabin in the Woods? Where are the intrepid
genre filmmakers willing to be unironic, challenging viewers comfortable with
game-style plot twists and the digitized world of mash-ups and re-tweets in
which the amused head is more familiar than the aroused heart? I had HIGH hopes
The Cabin in the Woods, but it fell flat for me.

Overall Grade:

D