The Cabin in the Woods 2012

 Before Drew Goddard wrote and directed this 2012 horror comedy he was a writer for Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel working with producer Josh Whedon.  He also co-wrote and produced one of The Man Hole's favorite TV shows ever LOST.  He would go on to write Cloverfield continuing his work with J.J. Abrams who was producer of the film.  Goddard and Whedon co-wrote the screenplay in three days.  Heather Lagencamp (Nancy from Nightmare on Elm Street) and her husband David LeRoy's company AFX Studio did the special effects, costuming, and makeup for the film.  The film stars Kristen Connolly (House of Cards and Zoo), Chris Hemsworth (Thor, Avengers), Fran Kranz (Dollhouse and Much Ado About Nothing), and Jesse Williams (Grey's Anatomy) play college friends who decide to go to a remote cabin that Curt (Hemsworth) just inherited from his dead cousin.  What they don't know is that it's a big set up for something much bigger.

     I gotta admit, this isn't the first time I watched this film and the first time I did, I didn't like it very much.  I had heard so many things about how this movie would change the way I looked at horror movies for the rest of my life.  That this film was something we had never seen before on a movie screen.  Like I said the first time none of this happened, for me at least.  I liked the film but I didn't LIKE it and it certainly wasn't the "game changer" it was touted as being.  Recently I picked up the blue ray at a very decent price so I decided to give it another watch for the Blog-A-Thon during The Countdown To Halloween and boy am I glad I did.  I don't know what was happening in my life the first time I saw this but I certainly wasn't as receptive to it as this time as I did get a little but of the game changer feel this time.  The creators do all the twists and turns that the movie gives while giving us a sly wink and a nod of the head as it pulls one horror movie cliches after another but what it does differently is it tells us why we have all these cliches.  

What this film does, and kudos to Goddard and Whedon for it, is they take the horror movie formula and mythologies and toss them out the window to start fresh.  Cabin takes all the  story strand you normally see in a "teenagers who are secluded in a creepy setting begin to have sex and do drugs just before the screaming starts" but then puts them in a big tumbler and unleashes them to see what we get.  It's sort of like rolling the dice in a game of Yahtzee.  Remember what Scream did for the slasher genre?  Well Cabin does the same thing here for whatever genre you would call this.  Everything is familiar here but nothing is as it seems and the WHY that is is where the real story come is.  All the actors do a good job but the scene stealer is Kranz here who plays Marty the stoner.  Let's be real here he plays Shaggy from Scooby Doo and even though he might be the one who is the out of it truthfully he might be the only one who can see through all of it and turns out he may be humanity's last hope.  The first time I saw this movie I gave it two and a half stars out of five.  I just didn't get it, this time I did and realized that I was in on the joke this time which always helps.  This time the film gets 4 One Way Mirrors Covered Up By A Weird Painting out of 5.  Was that too long?  It felt kinda long.  Denise, The Horror Honey, didn't like the film as much as I did even if it did have Thor in it she gave it 3 out of 5.  Maybe if Hemsworth had his Thor hair she would have given it a better score?