A movie about a group of college kids who go to a remote cabin—a jock, a scholarship jock, a stoner and some hot girls, one a brainiac, one a party girl—complete with a dangerous hillbilly type, mysterious incantations and lines like “No matter what, we have to stay together,” sounds very familiar. Like a thousand teen chillers we’ve seen before, but add in a secret government agency, ancient evil life forms and other surprises (you’ll get no spoilers here) and you have the best mash-up of horror and humor since “Scream.”
All I will tell you about the plot is this: five college friends go to a cabin in the woods. Then all hell breaks loose. All the conventions of the teen horror genre are here, but turned upside down.
The pleasure of “Cabin in the Woods” is in the not knowing, so excuse the brief synopsis. Go in fresh and be surprised.
I can tell you there has never been a slasher flick quite like “Cabin.” The subversive mix of horror movie lore—“The virgin’s death is optional.”—post modern self awareness and gruesome gags isn’t new but rarely has it been this smartly presented.
Like romantic comedy, horror is a genre that frequently takes the easy way out. By the time we got to “Saw 3478: A Stab in the Dark” the movies were more about how many gallons of stereoscopic blood could be squirted toward the audience than creating a new, intriguing story.
Conversely “Cabin in the Woods” screenwriters Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard (who also directed) have crafted a film that is exhilarating in the way it adopts and then challenges the conventions of the form. They even have fun with J-horror with hilarious results.
Expect Whedon’s trademark crackling dialogue. Expect gallons of blood. Expect to be challenged. Expect the unexpected.
Are there any more frightening words in a horror movie synopsis than “five friends head to a remote cabin”? That phrase has been the starting point for many scary scripts, conjuring up visions of ancient evil life forms, dangerous hillbilly types, mysterious incantations and lines like “No matter what, we have to stay together.”
The “cabin in the woods” genre is decades old, but almost always follows the same formula—five good-looking teens, say, a jock, a stoner, some hot girls, one a brainiac, and a party girl—go to a cabin, only one or two make it home.
The remade Evil Dead shakes up the formula to an extent. In it some handsome people head to an isolated cottage not to drink and party but to help Mia (Jane Levy) kick her addiction to drugs. The details are different, but the outcome—and this isn’t a spoiler, just a statement of fact—is the same and that’s what we like about the genre.
The most well loved “cabin in the woods” movies must be the first two Sam Raimi Evil Dead films. The original, and namesake of the series, was actually shot in a real life abandoned cottage. In it five friends go to a cabin in the woods (sound familiar?), discover a ‘Book of the Dead’ and unleash flesh-possessing demons. It made a star of Bruce Campbell and lead to a sequel, Evil Dead II, another cabin movie that is equal parts silly and scary.
Eli Roth made his directorial debut with Cabin Fever, a movie inspired by real life events. The idea for a film about a group of friends in a (you guessed it!) cabin in the woods, tormented by a flesh-eating virus and homicidal townsfolk, came to him as he worked on a horse farm. “I was cleaning hay out of this barn and got this infection on my face,” he says. The rash got so bad that, “I went to shave and I literally shaved a third of my face off.” It hurt, but he looked at the bright side. “I thought, ‘This is actually going make a great movie one day.’”
Sleepaway Camp—ignore the sequels, although the number two’s title Unhappy Campers is pretty great—sets the action at a summer camp. This gory slasher flick is most notable for a wild twist ending that has been called a “jaw-dropping, tape-rewinding, pause-and-stare-and-call-your-friends-over-to-stare” moment.
What to watch when you’ve already watched everything Part Eight! Binge worthy, not cringe worthy recommendations from Isolation Studios in the eerily quiet downtown Toronto. Three movies to stream, rent or buy from the comfort of home isolation. Today, a strange biography, lovestruck bank robbers and a cabin in the woods. #ALiarsBiographyTheUntrueStoryofMontyPythonsGrahamChapman #TheTown #ACabinInTheWoods
Welcome to the House of Crouse. Set in a world where regular folks still open the door for rattily dressed kids selling magazines, American Honey is a road trip about families lost and families found, about poverty and disenfranchised youth. We tale to the stars Riley Keough and Sasha Lane. Then, from the vault just in time for Halloween, we have Drew Goddard talking about his amazingly good and amazingly underrated 2011 movie Cabin in the Woods. C’mon in and sit a spell!
You wouldn’t expect that from the pen behind some of the creepiest episodes of TV shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Lost. Or the man also wrote the big-monster movie Cloverfield and directed Cabin in the Woods, the genre busting horror flick. But Drew Goddard was so disturbed by the first horror film he ever saw he had trouble sleeping for a month.
“My younger brother loved horror movies way before I did and one night he put on Sleepaway Camp,” he says, “which is not a very good movie. But to be fair I don’t remember because I’ve never been able to watch it again because it scared me so bad. I remember the first scene being something along the lines of two kids on a boat with their father and it is a very realistic depiction of their father having an accident and dying. Absolutely traumatized me.
“Then the movie gets crazier and crazier. It was The Crying Game before The Crying Game. So it was definitely the kind of thing a seven year old should NOT be witnessing. I remember I had to sleep in the hall outside my parent’s room for months afterwards because I was so scared by that.”
Later, in his teens he discovered the fun and escapism in horror movies. “There is a joy in being terrified,” he says, and it is that kind of rush he brought to his directorial debut Cabin in the Woods, co-written with his Buffy collaborator Joss Whedon.
“This movie came from a place of love,” he says. “We just love horror movies and set out to make a great horror movie. Then we started working on it and thought, ‘We’re not developing this for a studio. We have the freedom to do what we want, so let’s do whatever we want. Let’s put everything we’ve ever wanted to see in one movie into this one movie.’”
The result is a movie HitFix said, “is not just a great horror film, but also a thesis on why we need horror films and what role they serve in our diet.”
Goddard appreciated the raves the film has been receiving, but wants people to know he and Whedon aren’t trying to reinvent the horror wheel.
“From the structure there is more to it than five kids going out to the woods,” says Goddard, “but it’s not like we set out to unravel everything. It was more like, let’s do this and let the have the character’s ask the questions and have it be part of the fabric of the movie.
“It really came about by us saying we love the experience of going to horror cinema, and let’s try and give the audience the best possible time.”
A movie about a group of college kids who go to a remote cabin—a jock, a scholarship jock, a stoner and some hot girls, one a brainiac, one a party girl—complete with a dangerous hillbilly type, mysterious incantations and lines like “No matter what, we have to stay together,” sounds very familiar. Like a thousand teen chillers we’ve seen before, but add in a secret government agency, ancient evil life forms and other surprises (you’ll get no spoilers here) and you have the best mash-up of horror and humor since “Scream.”
All I will tell you about the plot is this: five college friends go to a cabin in the woods. Then all hell breaks loose. All the conventions of the teen horror genre are here, but turned upside down.
The pleasure of “Cabin in the Woods” is in the not knowing, so excuse the brief synopsis. Go in fresh and be surprised.
I can tell you there has never been a slasher flick quite like “Cabin.” The subversive mix of horror movie lore—“The virgin’s death is optional.”—post modern self awareness and gruesome gags isn’t new but rarely has it been this smartly presented.
Like romantic comedy, horror is a genre that frequently takes the easy way out. By the time we got to “Saw 3478: A Stab in the Dark” the movies were more about how many gallons of stereoscopic blood could be squirted toward the audience than creating a new, intriguing story.
Conversely “Cabin in the Woods” screenwriters Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard (who also directed) have crafted a film that is exhilarating in the way it adopts and then challenges the conventions of the form. They even have fun with J-horror with hilarious results.
Expect Whedon’s trademark crackling dialogue. Expect gallons of blood. Expect to be challenged. Expect the unexpected.
Are there any more frightening words in a horror movie synopsis than “five friends head to a remote cabin”? That phrase has been the starting point for many scary scripts, conjuring up visions of ancient evil life forms, dangerous hillbilly types, mysterious incantations and lines like “No matter what, we have to stay together.”
The “cabin in the woods” genre is decades old, but almost always follows the same formula—five good-looking teens, say, a jock, a stoner, some hot girls, one a brainiac, and a party girl—go to a cabin, only one or two make it home.
This weekend’s Evil Dead shakes up the formula to an extent. In it some handsome people head to an isolated cottage not to drink and party but to help Mia (Jane Levy) kick her addiction to drugs. The details are different, but the outcome—and this isn’t a spoiler, just a statement of fact—is the same and that’s what we like about the genre.
The most well loved “cabin in the woods” movies must be the first two Sam Raimi Evil Dead films. The original, and namesake of the series, was actually shot in a real life abandoned cottage. In it five friends go to a cabin in the woods (sound familiar?), discover a ‘Book of the Dead’ and unleash flesh-possessing demons. It made a star of Bruce Campbell and lead to a sequel, Evil Dead II, another cabin movie that is equal parts silly and scary.
Eli Roth made his directorial debut with Cabin Fever, a movie inspired by real life events. The idea for a film about a group of friends in a (you guessed it!) cabin in the woods, tormented by a flesh-eating virus and homicidal townsfolk, came to him as he worked on a horse farm. “I was cleaning hay out of this barn and got this infection on my face,” he says. The rash got so bad that, “I went to shave and I literally shaved a third of my face off.” It hurt, but he looked at the bright side. “I thought, ‘This is actually going make a great movie one day.’”
Sleepaway Camp—ignore the sequels, although the number two’s title Unhappy Campers is pretty great—sets the action at a summer camp. This gory slasher flick is most notable for a wild twist ending that has been called a “jaw-dropping, tape-rewinding, pause-and-stare-and-call-your-friends-over-to-stare” moment.
A movie about a group of college kids who go to a remote cabin—a jock, a scholarship jock, a stoner and some hot girls, one a brainiac, one a party girl—complete with a dangerous hillbilly type, mysterious incantations and lines like “No matter what, we have to stay together,” sounds very familiar. Like a thousand teen chillers we’ve seen before, but add in a secret government agency, ancient evil life forms and other surprises (you’ll get no spoilers here) and you have the best mash-up of horror and humor since “Scream.”
