The Cabin in the Woods [66 points / 8 votes]
"Five college students off to spend a weekend up by the lake -- it's an archetype that immediately strikes fear into the heart of the potential viewer. The template has been applied to horror films, reality TV, or -- most insidiously -- mid-'90s 'indies' where twentysomethings talk about their feelings. Thankfully, The Cabin in the Woods decides to go with true horror.
The film's portrayal of its target audience is interesting, both flattering and sympathetic while at the same time solipsistic and selfish (youth is often portrayed in this fashion in horror cinema, both to insulate its proceedings from the outside world and to in some way justify the slaughter that comes down against them). It's almost inadvertent the way the film completely tears apart the mechanism of reality TV -- watch how the five are molded, through chemicals and manipulation, into becoming their chosen archetypes. What is demanded is no innovation, and the same scenario served up again and again.
It's fascinating that a film so concerned with archetypes and formulae instead feels liberating. When the System Purge is activated and hundreds of cubes of nightmare fodder are unleashed into a common space, it provokes a general awe (think back to playground-based 'If X fought Y' theory), but also a leveling of the playing field where giant critters, the legacy of violence and sexual abuse, stabby unicorns, and angry molesting trees all have equal footing to get into the subconscious.
The Cabin in the Woods is a remarkable achievement about the acts of making and watching a film. Its great moments (and there are several) all deal with a sudden shift outward in perspective, where a limited view just doesn't get across the scope of what's actually happening onscreen. And then in its final third, all bets are off as the parameters expand; everything goes crazy and things get cosmically awesome (a correct word in both fanboyish and divine connotations)." - Jason Shawhan
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