Enter The Cabin in the Woods: A horror movie about horror movies that’s not very scary. Movie Review.

By Jay Stone

Postmedia News

The Cabin in the Woods

Starring: Jesse Williams, Chris Hemsworth Fran Kranz, Kristen Connolly, Anne Hutchison, Richard Jenkins

Directed by: Drew Goddard

Running time: 105 minutes

Parental advisory: horror, frightening scenes, violence

Rating: Three and a half stars out of five

The most shocking moment in The Cabin in the Woods — which is both a horror film and the deconstruction of one — comes just around the time you think you must be in the wrong theatre. In the lunchroom of a bland-looking technology company, two middle-aged men, Sitterson (Richard Jenkins) and Hadley (Bradley Whitford) are talking about middle-aged life. Hadley’s wife has childproofed their kitchen to the extent that he can’t open a drawer. “I’m going to pick up some power drills,” says Hadley. “Liberate my cabinets.”

Just then, the title flashes on the screen with a sharp musical sting that startles you: “The Cabin in the Woods” in all-business block letters that are reminiscent of the way Michael Haneke introduced the 2008 remake of his shocker Funny Games. That was a genuinely frightening movie about a home invasion that also challenged audiences to examine their attraction to violence in movies. The Cabin in the Woods never reaches those heights (or depths) of sadistic provocation, but in its own self-aware way, it aims to do much the same thing: take apart the horror genre to see what it’s made of.

Modern audiences are used to this kind of thing. Scream was also a horror film about horror films, and there are scenes in The Cabin in the Woods — when a teenager under siege tells everyone they should split up rather than stay together — that play with the conventions in a similar way. But as it rolls toward an all-encompassing uber-thriller that aims to wrap up the form, the audience, and the underlying mythos into a special-effects extravaganza of archetype, The Cabin in the Woods forgets one thing: it forgets to be frightening.

The result is a film that might be too smart for its own good, a piece of meta-fiction that’s all meta. The Cabin in the Woods isn’t trying to scare us as much as it’s trying to enlighten us about being scared, then settles for amusing us about it.

Therefore, SPOILER ALERT: This review may contain the word “postmodern.”

We know where we are almost from the first scene, when we meet the quintet of prototypes who live and die in hundreds of lesser movies. There’s athletic Curt (Chris Hemsworth), his girlfriend Jules (Anna Hutchison), who stands for the slutty one, their friend Dana (Kirsten Connolly), who’s purer — not a virgin, but virgin-like — and courtly Holden (Jesse Williams), her scholarly blind date. Joining them is Marty (Fran Kranz), a clownish stoner who is introduced holding a monumental bong. Kranz, a sort of half-baked Owen Wilson, is a scene-stealer who gives The Cabin in the Woods an ideal viewpoint: intoxicated. They’re heading for a weekend at Curt’s cousin’s cabin, the old Buckner place.

“The nest is empty,” says a man with binoculars who is watching them go. “We’re right on time.” He’s a viewer like us, the knowing audience.

The movie works with many such doubles as it heads into familiar horror territory, which includes a stop at a rundown gas station where a backwoods hillbilly who spits tobacco adds a note of early menace. “The Buckner place,” he says. “I seen plenty come and go.” You and us both, brother.

Once the friends get there, they continue to re-enact old patterns. The film was co-written by Drew Goddard (writer of Cloverfield and Alien) and Joss Whedon (Buffy and, lest we forget, Toy Story) and it’s a clever compendium of horror tropes: games in the cabin; sex in the woods; noises in the basement. Marty is an especially welcome addition, the genial pothead who suspects his life is a reality TV show.

It’s more than that, as it turns out, and once the film’s conceit becomes clear, there’s considerable pleasure in watching how Goddard and Whedon play with the genre in the broadest way: not just here, but in Japan, where one of those Asian monsters — a woman with stringy hair — is enacting a second, off-screen elucidation of terror.

But horror must shake us, and The Cabin in the Woods is centered in the head, rather than the guts. It’s for fans who have seen it all: horror with its own built-in critique, where the audience is part of the cruelty. It’s not scary, but it sure is, well, postmodern.

jstone@postmedia.com

canada.com/stonereport

CAPSULE — The Cabin in the Woods: Five young people, representing the stereotypes of the form, go to an isolated cabin and run into cliche terrors. Co-writers Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard are creating a critique — and a tribute — that is both funny and clever, but neglects to be frightening. Three and a half stars out of five. — Jay Stone

PN 4/10/12 12:10:22