HMM '12 Day 30: The Cabin in the Woods

It's almost the end of October! That means two very important things: Pumpkin Pie Pop-Tarts are here, and Halloween is very near! My favorite thing to do in October to prepare myself for Halloween is to, of course, watch movies that I feel best exemplify the season. Now, this doesn't just mean extreme gore fests (of course, I do love me some gore), but I like to include movies that have that Halloween feel. Anyway, let's get to Day 30 of Halloween Movie Madness 2012!

The Cabin in the Woods
(Lionsgate, 2012)

I have been agonizing over this movie for the past month.  Not because of how I feel about the movie, but because I wasn't sure how I was going to approach it.  Usually, I am one hundred percent against spoilers.  With this movie, however, I feel that I can't really talk enough about it without spoiling some things.  With that said, there will be some spoilers in this post.   

This movie is not what is seems.  You would think that it is just going to be the standard "college kids go into the woods and get brutally slaughtered" movies.  There's even the right group: the whore, the athlete, the nerd, the fool, and the virgin.  On their way up to the cabin, they meet the creepy old guy who tries to warn them.  That night, they party.  Everything seems on pace to me just another slasher flick.  Almost.

She really likes this moose.

In between these scenes, we are given looks inside a facility with people watching our victims.  We see some of the workers talking about pumping chemicals into the cabin.  They talk to the creepy old man (in a hilarious scene involving speakerphone) about the victims.  Then we see a betting board with all kinds of creatures listed on it.

Yes, this facility is controlling some of what is going on in the cabin.  They even pop open the cellar door to tempt the victims down into it.  When they get down there, they find all kinds of interesting artifacts.  Everything from a wedding gown, to a film strip, to a conch shell.  One of the girls ends up reading out of a diary and ends up summoning the Redneck Torture Family.

Throughout this, we find out that there are similar things going on all around the world.  Like in Japan and Sweden. See, these people are sacrifices.  There are old Angry Gods who sleep inside the earth, and in order to keep them sleeping people must be sacrificed in a certain manner.

We also find out that every single sacrifice around the globe has failed.

That means bad things for everyone if this one fails.  The deaths in our sacrifice have to happen in a certain order, and the virgin has to be the last one.  She can live or die, but she needs to be the last one alive.  As it turns out, she isn't the lone survivor.  The fool, a.k.a. resident stoner, survives.  Not only that, but he also finds some of the facility's equipment in the cabin.  And finds the way down into the facility.

Down in the facility, we get the best part of the movie.  Not only do we get to see all of the creatures that could have been freed to kill our sacrifices, but we also get to see them all escape and start slaughtering everyone.  Like Fornicus, the Lord of Bondage and Pain there.  And, of course, the merman in an awesome scene.

The whole movie is a satire aimed at people who watch horror movies with certain expectations and the backlash that comes about if those expectations aren't met.  In this movie, it's the gods raising from their slumber and destroying the earth, as opposed to people bitching about it on the internet.  It's pretty close though.

This movie is one of my favorite recent horror movies, and I would even say one of my favorite movies of the year.