THE CABIN IN THE WOODS, So?

Saw it....

No one needs to read my thoughts on this (so stop now). Seriously, this movie so codifies thoughts I've been assembling for the last few years that it's really going to be easily dismissible as bile and vinegar and crankitude by those who loved this film. Seriously. I won't be making any friends with this post and I usually hate to read online screeds. Who cares what I think, anyway, if you liked it? So go ahead and like it.

Okay. Deep Breath.

Exactly what I feared, sorry to say. I have seen the death of horror and it is... clever. Smug, full of itself, too superior to the movies it never loved but only ever felt superior to to actually even try to be scary. Drag us through the same EVIL DEAD scenario you're bored with (and were bored with originally - how could anyone have thought that was scary?) and "better than", so that you can underscore stuff you learned in your "Modern Horror Film Tropes" class - or thought you were really insightful discovering on your own because the weed augmented your pattern recognition while you were wasting time in college - only for the payoff to be - a CGI monsterfest and some b-grade symbology (damn all that torture porn ruining modern horror films - don't they know nothing's scary and it's all for yucks anyway? Why be so serious about sadism?).

I don't even hear the supposed snappy patter - everyone talks the same, all-knowing and arch, GILMORE GIRLS style, with no discernible difference in character (oh, the stoner guy uses big words and outdated phraseology for no good reason, occasionally). A movie about robots, by robots, for robots.

The Lovecraftian aspect was kind of cute - but then Lovecraft has been "hawt" these past few years - and not scary either, of course, for the internet generations - just novel - just another series of tropes to be examined, satirized, sanitized and put on the shelf in chibi and action figure form... like zombies... like slashers... like vampires... like ghosts... none of it can be taken seriously, none of it can scare, because if it scares you, then you've relinquished control and the dominant position... and if you meet it halfway and *allow* it to scare you... then you're complicit in your own submissive position, and who chooses to be a slave to fiction? What are you, like some stupid character in a stupid slasher film that separates from the group? What are you, stupid?

Even that CGI monster rally - this seems to be a recurrent thing in this era of "pattern-recognition-passing as creativity" (at least I seem to see it a lot in horror fiction and comics as well) - assemble the rest of your cool "tropes" like action figures on your bedroom floor, give us a good look, intimate all you could have done, how well-versed you are in your genre, how cool and creepy they would have been, how each could have a story... but you don't ever need to really write those stories now because, look, you showed us the toys, showed us you could make the moves, so why do the work anyway?

"That bit where the monsters are destroying the control rooms of the evil puppet masters - that was SO like SCREAM 2 when the self-referential slasher sequel guy is being bamboozled by the archaic stage scare tricks, like the fake thunder and lightning. Man, glad I caught that."

"What about NIGHTWISH, man, NIGHTWISH got there first, man, he's totally ripping off NIGHTWISH...."

No surprise this comes out parallel to the DARK SHADOWS remake, another film that can't imagine how anyone could find "this stuff" scary, and so won't try to (too much work).

Things I liked - the Merman payoff was kind of cute, the Japan bits made me laugh. There was something else I liked but damned if I can think of it...

Maybe we'll be lucky and now that it's been done, we can wash our hands of the whole meta thing (where else can it go, anyway, the last trick is to show you how the trick is done?) and a new generation can realize that it's much more fun to choose to play along and maybe be scared, and make works that try to scare, instead of being merely clever.

Or perhaps, this is just what it feels like to grow old in a hall of mirrors that (admittedly), we built ourselves - fun to visit, but who wants to live there? And who wants to grow old there? "look, see that over there... that's you... dying...endlessly reflected... isn't that cool?" 20 ccs of Lon Chaney in PHANTOM OF THE OPERA, stat!

But hold onto your hats, aging 20/30-something hipsters, the generation behind you hate your smug, boring, deliberately frivolous, self-congratulatory crap just as much as you hated our boring, trite, old-school Gothic crap that we dared to think was "good"... and they're moving up much faster on you than you did on us... watch your backs, there's a hyper-satirical, po-mo-soap-opera, meme-spouting ("fisting is the new bukkake") bit-storm, "air" "quotes", "literary mashup", bizarrobreed just waiting to chew up BUFFY and spit it back into your faces - and the generation behind THEM hates THEM even MORE...

Or maybe I could be kind and just say CABIN IN THE WOODS - the most overthought tribute to fun, goofy, stupid, cartoonish 80's horror films that has ever been made. We deserve it!

And I apologize to everyone on Mobius.

This post has been edited by Shawn Garrett on Apr 20 2012, 09:24 PM

Personally, I thought it was just a well-made, entertaining horror flick that referenced the horror genre itself in some fun, clever ways.*

And why are you apologizing, Shawn? So you disliked something that some of us like. What's to apologize for?

Vincent

* And I gotta say, I *LOVE* that the stoner is the only one who realizes what is actually going on, and that the film actually makes it a point that his pot-smoking is the reason they can't control him.

This post has been edited by Vincent Pereira on Apr 21 2012, 12:15 AM

Yeah Shawn, great post although I was more scared of your cynical "generation-wars" wrap-up.

As I said about it being an exercise, it was clearly not meant to be scary, just post-modernist. That's Whedon alright and he did it well but it's not for everyone. It is what it is and there's something there for everyone to like. I was entertained but it wasn't a "keeper" for me.

By the way, I saw EVIL DEAD at the right age and in the context of the video-nasties furore underway at the time and I certainly did find it scary and unlike anything I'd seen before so it's an important milestone for me even if today's kids couldn't stack it up against any of the other comedy-horror-splatters flicks it has subsequently spawned.

I haven't really liked anything from Joss Wheldon yet, so I'm not too psyched for this - and the trailer looks pretty dopey - but it still seems to be trying something different and people here are giving it some praise, so I'll stick it on my netflix list once the DVD comes out. But I hope you guys don't mind me following Shawn's lead and taking this conversation further into the theoretical.

I can't really say I'm too worried about younger generations not like my - or older - generation's films. I guess probably because I feel like most movies from every generation are kinda mainstream drivel, and the task is to find the gems hidden in every decade's films. It may be a little worse these days than it used to be, but hasn't it always been like that, really?

I know (just to pick one example) there are people with a strong nostalgic love for movies from the 40's, with the old slang, look, men in hats, etc. But take away the "I love movies from that period" angle, and a lot of those movies were formulaic and uninspired, too. For every classic that holds up today, most were churned out without substantive writing or artistic vision. "Next summer, the Thin Man gets a SECOND baby and a THIRD puppy!" ...Have today's films really taken us so much lower?

And I can empathize with a generation not finding horror films (vintage or contemporary) scary. I mean, they're really not, are they? Okay, to kids yeah. I can remember seeing Friday the 13th part whatever and imagining Jason lurking outside my house. But I really can't make a case that Friday the 13th part 5 is scarier than The Haunting or whatever else people hold up as "truly scary." It's just what I happened to see as a kid. But I don't find The Haunting scary. And hopefully we're not all just saying, "whatever I saw as a kid is the best movie and all movies today should be trying to emulate whatever I saw as a kid!" Is Boris Karloff's Mummy scarier than, say, Wrong Turn 4? I don't think so. If you saw Mummy at a young enough age for it to creep you out, then sure; but I bet if a young kid saw Wrong Turn 4, he'd be pretty creeped out, too. So, what's the actual standard?

Obviously, I appreciate that horror movies are better and worse in each other for a league of reasons... better acting, smarter writing, more atmospheric lighting, more compelling stories, etc etc etc... But when people judge a horror film on how "scary" it is or isn't, I just don't get what they're asking for. If it's just that "slow paced horrors are inherently better than fast-paced ones, so they should all aspire to be slower to build mood" I can't say I agree (some slow movies are better, sure, but some faster ones are, too). Asking filmmakers to try to be scary just seems like sending them on an impossible chase to bring us back a leprechaun or something.

Is that a generational thing? Is it like the stories you hear of the original radio broadcast of War of the Worlds, or the early silent film of the train moving towards the camera, and audiences jumping out of their seats? I always assumed those stories were more of the "print the legend" variety; but I don't know. Are older film watchers really experiencing a totally different range of emotions when watching their DVDs of The Haunting then today's twentysomethings?

All I know is that, as an adult, I don't find the horror movies of my childhood any scarier than the horror movies of anybody else's childhood. And if I wind up disliking Cabin, it won't be because it didn't make me hide under my seat... but because I didn't find the cleverness to really be so clever or something along those lines.

Are a lot of people saying that? Keep it up; maybe we'll get a Nightwish special edition cash-in Blu-Ray!

This post has been edited by John W McKelvey on Apr 21 2012, 03:50 AM

I kind of agree with John that "not scary" doesn't really seem to mean anything. Is BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN scary? Does it even try to be? The last thing I saw that (sort of) scared me was RINGU (and before that, nothing in decades), but even on first viewing, I didn't like it more than BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN, which didn't scare me when I first saw it as a kid.

I'd argue that CABIN IN THE WOODS is more of a horror comedy (an old and honorable subgenre that goes back to THE OLD DARK HOUSE and, again, BRIDE, if not the silent era) than a knowing spoof on or deconstruction of horror films. It's a dark one, of course, as befitting something that's also a paranoid conspiracy thriller.

SOME SPOILERS COMING UP

ALTHOUGH JUST A FEW

AND THEY"RE PRETTY MILD

It's also a Monster Mash, and as such, can be enjoyed the same way we enjoy DESTROY ALL MONSTERS and HOUSE OF FRANKENSTEIN. It's not having us on or poking fun at anything when all the monsters are released on the complex at the end, but giving us the kind of scene that would have made us smile and shout (possibly through our screams) as kids.

One thing I don't think it's given enough credit for is that the "generic" menace in the "cabin story" is actually pretty good. The "Redneck Zombie Torture Family" have a genuinely disturbing backstory, and when they arise and attack, they're nicely creepy and Fulci-esque. I'd argue that they're the best cinematic zombies we've had in a while, and they're effectiveness is enhanced by the fact that they're apparently not cannibals and know how to use weapons, which makes them stand out from the crowd. If the whole of the movie were just the "cabin story," and it was done by someone other than Whedon and Goddard, I think a lot of us would be saying "you know, as derivative as this, it's pretty cool."

Yes, every decade of movies has its dross from which the gems must be/have been sifted. I never said, anywhere, that older movies are inherently superior or uniformly better and I have no "preferred era".

No, I never said that only what I saw as a kid was scary - I was 16 or so when I saw EVIL DEAD and, yes, it scared me as well.

Yes, horror tropes get overused and then become fodder for parody - horror hosts and THE MUNSTERS already proved this decades ago. Not my point.

Three things about this:

One, what people mean by scary is so large and subjective, and

A. the whole problem of the fact that different people find different things scary is a complicating factor,

B. and the whole problem of the fact that familiarity - especially with the hacked out examples - has bred contempt from a weary audiences,

C. and the whole problem of the fact that mainstream cultural reference points have become unmoored and we've become less of a unified culture and more a culture of small affinity groups and so even finding things that everyone even *might* consider scary seems a fruitless task,

D. and the whole fact that the real world has outpaced fictional horrors,

all that, and more, has made this topic not really something that this is the place for, as it's *very* complicated but...

Two, I wasn't accusing the film of not being scary - I was accusing it of not even TRYING to be scary. I go see lots and lots of movies that aren't scary all the time, as I'm sure we all do, but they're TRYING to be scary - they've accepted the challenge of fiction..

"It wasn't scary" is a complaint I hear/read all the time about horror movies and (ignoring even all the above factors, which have great influence on this statement) I sympathize - but something I left out of the above list is a very modern audience (internet generation) attitude - which is to not even meet the film halfway - not even give it the vaguest benefit of the doubt. Not to engage with fiction. And, again, perhaps that comes from being burned by so many obvious hacked out, uncaring, mechanical pieces of garbage, but still, what's the ultimate outcome of that attitude? Endless disappointment, because nobody can scare someone who stands there with their arms crossed and says "scare me" - and even worse if they're smart and so their tactic is not just to point out the seam on the monster mask, but to spout on endlessly about genre tropes and meta-distancing techniques, not even in honest critique but simply as a means of easy dismissal - they demand something which they themselves have defined out of existence.

And so now this attitude has turned the corner back around from the audience to the filmmakers who, in a game of "knowing references/SCREAM one upsmanship", can now make entire films that not only don't try to be scary but are inherently about how movies really aren't scary, smugly take them apart on the screen... and then want to have their cake and eat it too with a CGI monsterfest (because that hasn't been done to death in modern films) which is presented as inherently loving by it's mere context but with no ability to pull that off because it's context completely undermines any support such a loving example would require - so it's just a token - all while still being ironic and glib until the end of the world.

Three,

- so, John, why do you even watch horror films? To scratch your beard and speculate on their meaning? I watch comedies to laugh, I don't approach them thinking "this won't actually be funny, of course, but it will be interesting to see if Adam Sandler can make that facial expression he's figured out how to shoehorn into all of his movies.. except PUNCH DRUNK LOVE, of course, being that it's a...".

So, I guess my answer to your question is "Yes, they are. And they should try to be." Believe it or not, I find DAWN OF THE DEAD scary. Avowed atheist that I am, I still find both ROSEMARY'S BABY and THE EXORCIST scary. I find THE HAUNTING scary. And to show that this isn't all nostalgia, I found parts of PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 2 and THE INNKEEPERS scary. I find lots of other movies scary - in the sense that I know they are fiction and and I meet them halfway and allow myself to be scared. Do I find them scary in the sense that an armed man in my house would make me scared? No, of course not. With the very best, the well-made, horror films, I (and I have to believe others) can *achieve* that superior level of scare, that actual feeling of personal danger or disturbance, but that comes from playing along with a film in the first place, playing the game of fiction, giving in to the the experience. People used to do that naturally - I.E. - no, those stories are not "print the legend" - as hard as it may be for modern people to believe - but yes, people were that willing to be THAT immersed in their entertainment, willing to be carried away, that naive if you must. They didn't stand outside it and examine it. Teenagers killed themselves after reading THE SORROWS OF YOUNG WERTHER, as well. But not only don't they do this anymore, the best and the brightest sneer at the possibility that anyone would, and I guess I'm marking the point where I realize that we may not be capable of going back anymore. The distanced, ironic, po-mo pose will not remain a pose but become the stance, the full position in the mainstream landscape (we've been teaching it to our children, via SHREK et al., so as to make growing up in this world easier, I suppose) - and the only entertainment such a stance can engender, once it's done with its bag of tricks and once there's no more "unenlightened enjoyment" to expose, will be endless narcissistic pandering - we disappear up our own assholes while looking in the mirror, essentially. Weren't we "hot"? Weren't we "funny" - it's the high-school mindset exemplified into mainstream culture.

I can actually verbalize/chart how these attitudes got absorbed into the mainstream culture (my dearly loved MST3K is a prime mobilizer, unfortunately) but this is too long-winded as is.

And not to be misunderstood - I love examining and dissecting horror films. That's why I read these boards, why I read VIDEO WATCHDOG, why I still push NIGHTMARE MOVIES (the new edition sits here at my elbow, waiting to be read!) as the most entertaining and eye-opening book about horror films that I know. I can even enjoy the occasional self-referential item. But the people on these boards, the writers for VW, Kim Newman - they love (or at least respect) these films while discussing their strengths and weaknesses.

But presenting the blackboard discussion about the film as if it's the film is just lazy and smug - hell, CABIN IN THE WOODS can't even work up a valid "banality of evil" argument, which it seemed to be heading towards, as the narrative has to get to its monstermash-trope megamix and then convince us that the ultimate horror isn't even the end of the world, the ultimate horror is that the old things demand the suffering and death of innocent teenagers. I can even see the "final triumph" of the Buckner girl zombie as some kind of comment on "even the little guy monster, used and abused by these people, get's its revenge" but, even then, I didn't buy it, the movie didn't try to sell it to me, it's just popped into the schematic. The butterfly in flight is beautiful and mysterious. The butterfly pinned to the board is explained and dead. I like the beautiful and mysterious. Don't get me wrong, I like the explanation. What I don't like is being told that a pinned butterfly is better than a butterfly in flight, superior to it in fact. "Stupid butterfly, why can't you realize that you exist merely to pollinate plants? What are you, stupid?"

Put another way, I can accept that some people don't find Harold Lloyd funny, I can imagine going to see a Harold Lloyd film and not laughing, but what I don't have any interest in, and what would dismay me greatly, is going to see a Harold Lloyd biopic that's completely and totally about how Harold Lloyd wasn't really funny at all (*not* that he was, maybe, a bastard or cheated some of his gags) and how could you never have realized that, with the entire structure of that film designed to make that point over and over again, only to have Fatty Arbuckle walk into the frame near the climax, fart, and leave... because, y'know, *that's funny*! And again, while I chose a nostalgic example, this isn't merely nostalgia. I think Louis C.K. is funny, I love U.C.B. - but Jack Benny (actually, Mary Livingstone, to be honest) makes me laugh, as does Paul Rhymer's writing, and the ensemble casts' delivery, on VIC & SADE. I don't find *everything* funny ("if everything is good then nothing is good") and I don't find *everything* scary - I'm not an easy touch (obviously) - but I want some effort. And I expect to put in some small effort myself.

I guess I might have had a better chance of a "wow, cool" reaction to CABIN if I hadn't read those widely printed interview quotes about the intent behind it. "Wunderkind of the next generation gets to make his ultimate horror film in reaction to how crappy horror films have become... cool" I thought - silly me - I just got something on the complete opposite end of the spectrum from SAW and THE HUMAN CENTIPEDE 2 (currently available for Netflix streaming... under "Cerebral Movies", no kidding!) but just as myopic.

In all honesty, I didn't see it as a horror comedy either. I can see that approach, but it's as much a horror comedy as, say, SEVERANCE was a horror comedy, which is that it wants to juggle two tones without doing the work of making them gel together.

No, NIGHTWISH is my little joke inside a joke. Maybe people will start saying it. I could have said DEMONS as well. I won't explain it but leave it to be unraveled, except to say both DEMONS and NIGHTWISH at least tried to be scary while having their fun (as I said above, whether they succeeded or not is up to the individual).


Ugh, dizzy....

SPOILERS quoted

But the film lets us know that that back story is just as unimportant, just as trivial, just as ephemeral as whatever backstory the cenobite ripoff, or the merman's conch, or the possessed necklace, or the evil old film, would have had. The movie isn't about that cool backstory, it's about knowing it's about that cool backstory. So even when that backstory was being expurgated, all I could think was "well, why waste time on this? you're above it anyway, it's all unimportant anyway". I liked quite a bit of po-mo stuff, as unlikely as that may seem given the above posts, but I also believe strongly that there's a point where things become so disassembled that you really can't have your genre cake and eat it too, expect the symbols to generate the reaction, since your exercise has been completely about demystifying and robbing those symbols of power. The world ended at the end of that film - did you care? Thanks goodness the filmmakers obviously didn't - and I mean that seriously. It would have been the height of absurd self-importance if we'd gotten shots of children burning in the streets and the like, and musical cues that expected us to feel it was important - by that point, even the filmmakers know we can't care. It's just another stupid horror movie, just with its eyebrow arched.

Obviously, I think it is a knowing spoof and deconstruction of horror flicks and intended as such - since when is a spoof not a form of comedy? If it's intended as a straight up horror comedy, though, then I obviously didn't find it as funny as it (and others) thought it was (I laughed 3 times, IIRC) and I'd argue that it uses that indeterminate status of what it's doing in a lazy way, plotwise. This entire, worldwide, centuries old scheme comes undone because a team of dozens (if not a hundred) people don't monitor one member of a highly-monitored group for long enough (the filmic equivalent - his death happens off screen in a film about deaths happening on screen - OF COURSE HE'S ALIVE, that's yet another genre trope!). Again, a little more care showing them lazy at their jobs or something - instead of actively monitoring for bet-able details, might have helped.

So, no, obviously didn't work for me.

This post has been edited by Shawn Garrett on Apr 21 2012, 11:27 AM

Whatever happened to just enjoying a movie for what it is, rather than what it "should" have been? Yeah, I'm guilty of that myself at times. Trying to break the habit, though. But the way I look at it, SHAUN OF THE DEAD wasn't scary, but it was a great homage that delivered because the creators reverence for the genre was up front n' center.

Now, I'm not gonna say TCITW is anywhere near as solid as that, but it's the closest that a Hollywood product has come to legitimately calling itself "The American SHAUN." Which has been applied to more than a handful of bottomfeeders.

But hey...maybe TCITW will pull a BLAZING SADDLES and drive a stake through the heart of the current Hollywood trope-heavy approach to horror. So if nothing else, maybe it'll serve a higher purpose by pushing horror merchants into rethinking the genre. Maybe.

I don't know... whatever happened to characters who were real and not walking trope-loaders for smart-assed, hipper than thou meta-commentary? I didn't start the discussion by shoving my plot sketches in someone's face for the price of a movie ticket and an evening's entertainment...

I guess I'd say the difference for me was that SHAUN was funny AND worked at being a scary movie. I laughed at everything I was supposed to in SHAUN, and I loved it, but I also felt really sad when Shaun's step-dad died, even sadder when Shaun's mum died, and I felt terrible when they leave the friend in the basement - and then I could still turn around and laugh. THAT's how you do horror comedy!

The only time I felt anything for any of the characters in CABIN was when the kid hit that invisible wall (that was the other thing I liked that I forgot about earlier) - I really liked it because for that moment, I was really caught up in the moment, worried whether he was going to make it or not. I'd completely blanked on the earlier foreshadowing and to be so abruptly reminded of it was ... good filmmaking.

This post has been edited by Shawn Garrett on Apr 21 2012, 01:47 PM

This is a good question, but ultimately I think the answer is kind of obvious. How many of us Monster Boomers who read FAMOUS MONSTERS and watched the Shock Theater package did so because the monsters scared us? I didn't. I loved monster movies as a kid with a mad consuming passion, and spent all my time in school drawing monsters in my notebook, but I didn't do it because I was scared of them. When something actually did scare me, for whatever random reason, such as the faces in the flowers in the original LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS, it wasn't a pleasant experience. Yes, I know this doesn't make sense -- At eight years old, I watched THE MANSTER on Sunrise Theater, with its eyeball in the shoulder and blood-splattered paper screens and the snarling second head, and had fun, but was traumatized by the final moments in LITTLE SHOP and had to sleep with the lights on and wished I hadn't seen it. I would stay up late on Friday nights to watch FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WOLFMAN, but the first five minutes of THE HAUNTING on the Sunday Night Movie sent me fleeing from the room and gave me nightmares for a week. I borrowed a neighbor kid's copy of EERIE because the magazine was advertised in the back of FAMOUS MONSTERS and was so upset by the story about the headless gorilla that comes back for the trophy hunter who decapitated it that my whole summer was practically ruined -- literally, my whole summer, as I couldn't sleep for months, and couldn't even return the magazine to Joey because I would started trembling when I approached it where it was lying on the coffee table.

Now, just a few years later, when I was 12 or so, I thoroughly enjoyed and collected CREEPY and EERIE, but that's because they didn't scare me anymore. Everything I read about NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD and TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE in various magazines when those films were first in theaters (and I was in my early teens) suggested they would be very unpleasant for me, and I avoided them until I was in college. Yet I was a huge consumer of horror comics and fiction and movies by the time I was in my early teens, and had been a Monster Kid before that.

I did eventually learn to enjoy stuff that was genuinely scary -- I remember being deliciously chilled by Ramsey Campbell's story "Replied Guaranteed" when I was a senior in high school. But by the point I could enjoy being actually scared by something like that or RINGU or "A Halo of Flies" in SWAMP THING or the telephone-and-bag scene in AUDITION, very, very, very, very few things actually produced that reaction.

Let's consider what's probably the most popular form of horror these days, the subgenre that's displaced slashers in the popular consciousness: the zombie movie. NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD clearly means to be scary, and it just as clearly WAS, once upon a time. But what about the other classics of the form? The original DAWN OF THE DEAD is largely very dark (and sometimes very heavy-handed and obvious) social commentary. There's copious splatter, but I don't think Romero and Savini at any point even try to make the zombies scary, at least not after the early scene in the tenements. I can see how EVIL DEAD could have scared people at a certain age, and yes, Raimi is trying to be scary, but come the better-remembered and more loved EVIL DEAD 2, he's not, particularly, instead it's manic gross-out comedy and reflexive things like Ash saying "groovy." Those of us who love RE-ANIMATOR love it for its sleazy 80s ambiance and the outrageousness of the "giving head" scene and Naked Barbara Crampton -- do you think that, when Pauline Kael nonplused her editor by raving about it, it was because it scared her? DEAD-ALIVE is considered a classic for "I kick arse for the Lord" and "your mother ate my dog!" (a line my friend Sunshine says her teachers used to quote back and forth to each other in the 8th grade, to the delight of their students) and, again, the over-the-top quality of the lawnmower massacre. I enjoy the film for its manic energy and the genuinely sweet way it treats the romance between Lionel and Paquita, not because it frightens or horrifies me. I enjoy DELLAMORTE DELLAMORE for its gothic Euro-horror beauty and Rupert Everett's hilariously morose line readings and the bizarre existential climax and Naked Anna Falchi, not because its busload of zombie nuns and boyscouts is frightening. And so on.

I find it interesting to consider my friend Lynne's reaction to CABIN IN THE WOODS. Now, Lynne is something of a fanboy's dream, in that she's a gorgeous geek with Barbara Steele eyes and a Russ Meyer bosom, who looks 15 years younger than her real age (she's 40), and who is an avid videogame player and action figure collector. Lynne has been a professional makeup artist, has worked as a zombie in the local attraction The Woods of Terror, and is so disenchanted with the experience of teaching Freshman English (she went into the MFA Writing program without a background in literary theory, as her undergraduate major was painting, and was afraid she wasn't qualified for her Teaching Assistantship, but after her first week said she might as well have been trying to teach a cage full of gibbons) that she's considering chucking it and becoming a mortician. Lynne loves horror pretty indiscriminately. She's made her own Michael Myers mask but also has every FRIDAY THE 13th installment. She has bookshelves over-burdened with horror books, but likes F. Paul Wilson (whom I consider pretty awful) as much as she likes Stephen King and Joe Hill. Her own fiction is very good and entirely sincere, and shows the influence of Shirley Jackson and Flannery O'Connor as well as King and Bradbury, and while it may not be "scary" to me, it's creepy and disturbing and passionate.

Lynne loved CABIN THE WOODS, absolutely loved it. She said it was the best time she's had at a movie in a decade, and that she can't wait to see it again. Throughout it, she was clapping her hands with glee, and she shouted aloud when she recognized the Evil Dead 2 house. About halfway through, she started to figure out what behind it all and started muttering "oh, please, yes, let it be Cthulhu!" FWIW, she's never watched BUFFY (she pretty much hates all TV except DEXTER and SPACED) and had no idea who Joss Whedon was. When I tried to tell her who he was, her response was "well, I don't know that I'd like any of his TV shows, but I'm glad to see that he clearly loves horror with all his soul, just like me. Is he single?"

Well, that's what I mean... If it's impossible (as I was suggesting might be the case), then it's a bit silly to expect them to try, isn't it? I don't go into films "arms crossed" so to speak (well... sometimes maybe lol but not all the time; I DO engage with fiction and try to work with it), but speaking for myself, there's nothing any film-maker can do to scare me. It just won't happen. Maybe a startle/jump scare, I guess, if you count those... but basically, no matter what avenue the filmmaker employs (slow, building atmosphere or mean-spirited gruesomeness or whatever else), it's not going to happen. So why should the filmmaker "blow all his ammo" so to speak on a hopeless cause, when he could instead use other filmic techniques that will succeed in evoking something else (whether it be a sense of fun, contemplative drama, or cleverness)?

I admit, though, I was drifting away from your specific criticisms of Cabin and more into the general theories.

Well, okay, that answers my question, and maybe answers the "why" of these movies, at least in part. Because to me, none of those films are scary. And it's not about THOSE movies - it doesn't matter if you swap those titles out with any other, they still won't have the potential to be scary for me. So I'm guessing maybe Wheldon or "filmmakers of his ilk" share that feeling with me. Films just can't be scary (to them), so that's not a level to attempt to engage on. Which I suppose leaves fans who genuinely do find some horror movies scary, and who are looking for that scariness, out in the cold. Which sucks. But, hopefully there are other filmmakers who do still engage with films that way and make films that work for the fans looking to be scared.

And so I guess Wheldon is just a filmmaker for the category of fans I fall into, and not the category you fall into. ...Except, ironically, I don't like his films either. haha

Yeah, Ian tackled this pretty well. Of course, different horror movies have different appeals - some are funny, some like Hellraiser are fantastic - like the Munchausen movies... And the more traditionally "scary" ones that I like tend to work dramatically. After all, death is a very weighty issue.

^So I disagree with this. There are lots of "real" ways to connect with good films (even horror films) that don't involve being scared. I enjoy Argento's Inferno, for instance, much in the same way I enjoy Kurosawa's Dreams. I certainly don't hope for horror cinema to become nothing more than cloying Scream knock-offs or Troma films (shudder).

Oh rats... from what I've gathered about Cabin, it seems to have a lot of, at least superficial, similarities with Nightwish (college kids go to an isolated cabin, all sorts of various horror and monsters ensue, turns out to be the work of a crazy science experiment)... I guess I'll have to be content with my 4:3 French disc.

When was that? I just revisited Swamp Thing maybe six months ago; I don't remember a scene with flies. Did I bathroom break through the best part?

The thing to keep in mind, also, is that Hollywood is institutionally incapable of making good, scary horror films. Obviously some sneak through and surprise (exceptions to the rule), but really, I can't even recall the last one that left me shaken leaving the theater.

John, I was referring to the SWAMP THING comic, or more specifically, the issue of Alan Moore's SAGA OF THE SWAMP THING (which is what it was titled when the well-loved but short-lived 70s book was revived in the 80s to tie-in with the film) in which Abigail, the heroine, realizes that she's been sleeping with her dead uncle, who's been wearing her husband's body, and that all his new co-workers are executed murderers he's brought back from Hell with him, and whose bodies are animated by a crawling horde of insects. It's the issue that lost the book it's Comics Code seal and ultimately led to the creation of the Vertigo line.

I thought I made it clear that by "scared" I don't mean physically or emotionally upset or shaking with fright - I meant it in the sense of the enjoyment of the thrill of fictional fear, the immersion in the experience or the moment. The mutual joy of fiction that is created when you know both you and the creator are equally invested in the work and respect each other. This covers pretty much all the later examples of "various ways of enjoying films" that enter the discussion, and having nothing to do with what I'm actually saying. I guess I just failed at making this understandable.

Since most of these examples seem to pivot on this misunderstanding, I don't see the point in taking the time to address them. Of course I enjoy "Inferno" on any number of levels that have nothing to do with being emotionally wrecked and shaken to my core by the admittedly silly scenario - but my point - and again, perhaps my inability to communicate is just making itself obvious yet again - is that while that scenario may have it's unintentional (and yes probably a few intentional) silly moments, Argento is attempting to get you to be "scared" (perhaps I should just quotes-it from now on) - to enjoy the fun of fear. He is playing the game of fiction with you. The same game of fiction you enjoyed as a youth, reading CREEPY magazine as I did, watching the Shock package as I did, etc. & etc. Ian, we have such a similar background that we might as well be twins for the purposes of what we're talking about - I just think we define it differently.

I don't feel Joss Whedon is doing that - perhaps he is attempting it and just failing miserably at it for me, because I see these arch distancing affectations as making that connection impossible. As I keep saying, it's like wanting to have your cake and eat it too - like a kid whose big magic trick for which he gathered friends and family is an elaborate, long-winded (I should talk!) stage presentation about how all the magic tricks work - "Mom, Dad, hey, did you know about this?!?"

I enjoy being "scared" (then, there it is) - having a fearful or frightening scenario presented to me as something worth being engaged in for the moment - all kinds of scenarios of various moods, tones, approaches, etc. Again, I don't sit and read a thriller worried about my present situation in the chair as I read. To me, the tactics Whedon uses are essentially self-defeating - like writing a thriller and starting every chapter with "by the way, you know they'll be okay, don't you? Haven't you read any thrillers before?".

The point of DAWN OF THE DEAD is to present the zombies as scary initially, and then make the inherent fear/disturbance come from the collapse of society, a much more profound source of "scariness".

The difference between EVIL DEAD and EVIL DEAD 2 is the exact difference between a horror and a horror comedy. So perhaps CABIN is not Whedon's tribute to ED2 but to EVIL DEAD 2, and thus it becomes the worlds most overwrought "see I get it too" tribute to an goofy 80's horror comedy? Okay - I give, you liked it as well. Good for you, Joss.

We seem to be mixing up the different intentions of horror films and horror comedies from this point on in your examples so why go on much further... I don't have a window into Pauline Kael's mind but the opposing example to make my actual point would be to something like - I don't think she would have thought so highly of the film if the fun, scary and anxiety inducing hunt for the cat in the basement ended with the plot veering off into an arch, knowing diatribe by West about how "cats are always getting killed in horror films, y'know? Why is that? Is it just me?". Stuart Gordon respects his audience enough to work at making that scene fun AND "scary" (again - not "gun to my head" scary, not "waking up in tears scary", just "scary") and not undermining it's whole effect through choices before or after.

So I guess from the examples given that CABIN IN THE WOODS is not an enjoyable horror film for me because it was never intended as a horror film, it's intended a horror comedy. So then I guess I just found it to be an unfunny, full of itself horror comedy but I can't complain that it treats its audience with contempt for liking any of the stuff it's using (unless they're hip and in on the secret) and expecting it to take the job of fiction-making seriously, because in the end it doesn't intend to do that.

re: Ramsey Campbell - coincidentally, I'm sending out an acquisition letter tonight in hopes of purchasing some stories of his for the horror fiction podcast I edit (I'm hoping to expose the audience to a wider range of materials than just current submissions - have run some Bryusov, Hodgson, James, Belgian weird tale author Thomas Owen, and was able to buy a favorite David J. Schow recently, while holding out hope for some Bradbury, Ellison and a particularly nasty Tennessee Williams piece I've always loved - but perhaps that's just foolhardiness on my part). Relevant to this discussion is my hope of getting "A Street Was Chosen", which presents a similar scenario to CABIN except from a few decades earlier (and, y'know, I liked a lot instead of feeling insulted by), while also being a nice extension of Matheson's "The Distributor" (which really would have made a wonderful Brother Theodore vehicle in adaptation).

Really, I don't know what more I can say, but I've learned that as long-winded as I think I am, I still utterly fail to get my points across and that I shouldn't assume that the most reductive reading of emotional states are not in fact the ones that will be assumed. I honestly didn't think the concept that people read "scary" stuff for fun - the fun of allowing ourselves to enjoy being scared in a non-threatening way by buying into a fiction - was that strange of an idea. Given those conditions, I have no idea why any modern reader would read any Poe or Bierce or M.R. James for that matter, aside from dryly dissecting it for a class, if one is not even going to allow oneself to "buy into" the concept for a moment in the hopes of enjoyment and a good "rattle to the nerves" if you're lucky.

This post has been edited by Shawn Garrett on Apr 22 2012, 03:40 PM

I don't think you failed to get your points across. Granted, maybe I took "scarey" too literally...

But I also don't think this distinction makes for such a huge disconnect in what either of us are saying. Take my past posts and just swap out my phrasing for yours... Instead of saying horror films don't evoke genuine fear from a large portion of its audience, say that maybe horror films don't evoke that thrill you describe from a large portion of its audience. And so on... If Wheldon doesn't feel it, and doesn't feel his audience does either, it makes sense that he would pursue other goals. I think all our points still stand.

I didn't find the monsters in THE CABIN THE WOODS scary, but I did find something chilling in the film's presentation of the bureaucracy of violence, particularly in the scene where (SPOILER!) the office parties while a girl is attacked on a video screen on the background. I don't think this is "scary" in the way of classic horror films, but it's not negligible, at least to me.

I liked it a lot, although it starts to run out of steam near the end, and the CGI is mostly not very good. If you’ve ever been frustrated that the characters in slasher films act so stupidly, CABIN takes you behind the curtain to reveal the bigger picture. It’s a clever, funny, and—most importantly—original sendup of horror movies and the first Hollywood film in a long while I’ve seen where I couldn’t predict what was going to happen next. Most of the fun comes from following the mystery, collecting the puzzle pieces, and trying to guess where Whedon and co-writer Goddard are taking us. The rest evolves from Whitford’s and Jenkins’ delightful performances, exaggerating their 8-to-5 Everyman personas and placing them into the most absurd scenario imaginable.

Due to the nature of CABIN’s mysterious premise, it isn’t a scary movie, but it still induces gasps and screams through sheer audacity. I’m not sure it is a horror movie, really, even though it has tons of monsters and blood and corpses. A comedy, for sure, but I liked it as a mystery too. I like the way it carefully dropped clues (sometimes subtly...when the eagle in flight met its demise, I thought, "Hmmm, okay, that's interesting) and made sure to pay them off later.

This post has been edited by Marty McKee on Sep 30 2012, 05:34 PM