Posted by: Bradley Redder
Yeah, yeah. Cabin was funny and clever and I got some kicks out of it, which I have already mentioned. My problem is not that it's not funny, but that it's not funny enough. In the end it just bothers me more than it entertains me. I'll admit that part of the reason is a little unfair and involves the gushing reception by its audience rather than the film itself. Everyone seems to think that this is a great film, that it's brilliantly conceived. And just to clarify: by "everyone" I obviously mean the seven things I've read on the Internet. A little cleverness goes a long way with people with screen names like "rapmetalrulz069" and cause movies like this to be hailed as "genius." The early comments I heard on this were so overwhelmingly positive, which could be because Twitter messages aren't long enough to include the "but" clause after "Cabin in the Woods is so fucking awesome..." So I've taken it upon myself to represent the absent clause of every Tweet I've read about Cabin.
Okay, that came out a little more spiteful than I had intended when I started, but oh well. And again, I recognize that it's not exactly a fair angle to argue given that it has nothing to do with the film itself, but its audience instead. But at the same time I feel like this movie is targeted to that type of audience, the one that hides behind Internet aliases and can only speak in hyperbole, so maybe I should be more spiteful and perhaps take another cheap shot at another ridiculous genre of music.
As for what is actually in the film... Not only do I say it's not fun enough, but I also say fun just gets in the way. In my review I mention that there is a cockiness inherent in this premise, and it is that cockiness which drives a lot of the humor (fun). Goddard and Whedon spend the first half, the good half, of the movie calling out horror conventions and making fun of them, and it's great. It made me believe that they had something new to bring to the table, something we hadn't seen before. But when we get to the end they don't have anything to say, nothing new, nothing we haven't seen. Just more of the same and, in fact, quite literally everything we've seen before. That's just not good enough; that's not fulfilling the promise they make in the beginning, and I can't let them off the hook simply because I laughed.
Also, Cabin is being referred to as a "horror-comedy," but where's the horror? This doesn't deserve to be brought up in the same breath as Scream, which also poked fun at horror conventions, but embraced them in a way that allowed it to do exactly what it was parodying, and it even did so effectively, doling out legitimate suspense and scares in between laughs. Cabin reveals its big secret so quickly that it kills any potential for suspense. Seeing puppeteers staging deaths based on horror conventions is funny, but it removes the opportunity to pretend like we don't know exactly what is going to happen so we can be thrilled and entertained while it does happen.
So comedy cancels out horror, yet I still have to watch teenagers struggle to live instead of be entertained by whatever Richard Jenkins and Bradley Whitford are doing in the control booth. For shame!
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