It’s Halloween So Let’s Talk Horror: Movie Recs From a Film Kid- The Cabin In The Woods (2011)

A Halloween Watchlist Is Incomplete Without The Cabin In The Woods

Part 3 of My Halloween Recommendation Series

Goddard’s The Cabin In The Woods is a horror movie for those who have seen every horror movie. It is a love letter to the genre and the creators within it. Well, as writer Joss Whedon described it, it’s a “love hate” letter to the genre. The movie captures the charm and flaw of every familiar trait of horror. It’s a witty smart slasher for the decades and a must watch for Halloween.

The Cabin In the Woods appears, initially, as a typical summer blockbuster horror film. It boasts the classic tale of a few young attractive adults in a small cabin, as the title explains, in the woods. Under the surface, both literally and metaphorically, there is something far deeper and complex going on. As revealed very quickly, underneath the cabin, there is a team of people controlling everything that occurs to the group during their stay. To reveal more of why that is, or how they do so, would only spoil the clever twists and revelations the movie creates.

It was intended to be a film capable of reviving the slasher so it is not without blood. For the most part, it is a consumable level of gore, often humorous or satirical, but it is unquestionably a horror movie. While funny and empathetic, the film is just as scary and engrossing as the movies it tastefully replicates or mocks. It is worth it, even if you aren’t a horror fanatic looking for satire.

Each character rejects audience expectations.  Instead of being their supposed archetypes of horror victims, they make the point that modern humanity is more than the limiting scripting of most blockbusters, in many instances being the opposite of what they were supposed to be. The cast bears the perfect cloak of simplicity with hidden complexity the film demands of them. We can confront our morbid fascination with the end of the world and gore while laughing at it simultaneously. 

The Cabin In The Woods is both an easily consumable horror comedy and a wildly complex intelligent cult movie that changed a genre. A slasher that mocks the slasher and brings it to a new level of greatness, entirely reviving the genre. Scary, hilarious, emotional- a newer classic. 

Written by Surina Belk-Gupta| Insta: @surinabg

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