A Kind Of, Sort Of Movie Review: The Cabin in the Woods

With spoilers approaching rapidly, so read appropriately.

...in which five stereotypes go to a remote cabin in the woods, and proceed to be killed off. And yet...

We learn early on that everything is being manipulated, from the cabin itself to the college kids, by an underground organization of (mainly) men in white shirts and black ala 1960s NASA. Eventually, we learn that these five are intentionally stereotypes ~ The Whore, The Athlete, The Scholar, The Fool, and The Virgin ~ which is a nice nod to understanding that, yes, indeed, five stereotypes walked into the woods.

Through a series of seemingly, and oh so not, random events, the stereotypes end up choosing how they die (Zombie Redneck Killing Family). What we learn eventually, though, is that just about every possible terrifying thing you can think of from your worst nightmares was an option. Things you didn't even know you were scared of were options. Kudos to the writers because they came up with the scary.

Which brings us to why I'm writing about it. One of the people high in the echelon of this movie is arachnophobic. The giant spider is there ~ it has to be ~ but only oh so vaguely. Blink and you miss it there. While we are watching every terrifying thing EVER kill huge numbers of people, the giant spider keeps not showing up. Eventually, we see two large, furry spider legs and a character take an ax to them, but aside from the legs, the rest of the spider is offscreen.

It is impossible for the writers and director to have left this one out. They had a child ballerina with a gaping maw of spiky teeth where her face should be for god's sake. They thought of "giant spider." But, as I have said for years, you never have to worry about being ambushed by a picture from an actual arachnophobe, because we don't post them. We don't make you look at them, because we cannot look at them. I think the same must apply to movies. No matter how scary, no matter how many phobic stereotypes you bring in, if you are arachnophobic, you don't add the spider. First time I've ever experienced it, and it was intriguing (I'm such a sociology nerd, I know).

To wrap up the review ~ which is totally secondary to the "huh, someone there was phobic" realization ~ the movie's pretty good, if you're into that kind of thing. It would've been much, much scarier if they had left out the part about the ancients and just let it be a psycho corporation doing it because they could. But maybe that's just me. Still, good flick and strongly delivered. With the bonus of not having to hide your eyes if you don't like spiders. If it's clowns or creepy white kids that get you though, know you're kind of fucked.

Those are Pobble Thoughts. That and a buck fifty will get you coffee.