The Brag

The Cabin In The Woods 
Friday March 9 (Opens in America on April 13; Australian release date still TBA.)
**** 

Right before the world premiere of SXSW’s Headlining film The Cabin In The Woods, Drew Goddard and Joss Whedon – who together wrote, directed and produced it – stepped up in front of the packed-out Paramount Theatre and issued a plea: “We hope you enjoy the film… and then keep it to yourself.” The only way this movie could have been as successful as it was on Friday was if the audience had no idea where it was going to take them. Pity the marketing team who had to create an entire campaign about a subject they were not allowed to talk about – and pity the reviewer who enjoyed it so much that she doesn’t want to ruin it for anybody.

As Whedon fans would have already read by now, the film uses sophisticated parody and structural surprises to deconstruct the horror genre, which both Whedon and Goddard have publically criticised as devolving into torture porn, tired cliches and “kids acting like idiots”. The basic set-up of the film is as typical as they come: five attractive college students – played by Kristen Connolly, Anna Hutchison, Fran Kranz, Jesse Williams and Chris ‘Thor’ Hemsworth who, to the delight of Whedon and Goddard, have become far better known than they were back in 2009 when the film was actually finished – head to a cabin in the woods to get drunk, get sexy, and play truth or dare. They encounter pretty much every single horror trope along the way, but this is no Scary Movie: the kicker’s in the subplot, which revolves around the omniscient Hadley & Sitterson (played delightfully by screen veterans Bradley Whitford and Richard Jenkins), who deadpan us into a world that’s surprising, hilarious, terrifying and insightful.

But even without the carefully balanced and (mostly) nuanced performances, Cabin In The Woods had all the ingredients to be huge this year: The one-two punch of Whedon and Goddard, whose film winks knowingly at their bank of die-hard fans all the way through, from the whip-smart dialogue at the beginning to the genius casting right at the end; the lengthy anticipation that built for the movie as it sat in purgatory after MGM went bankrupt; cult-favourite Lionsgate swooping in to save the day, adding it to a stable of American Psychos, Saws and Mad Mens; endless quotability, heaps of gore and a bunch of weed, making it perfect for late-night-with-shared-pizza re-watches; and an official premiere at SXSW, which couldn’t have been a more perfect fit.

The two hefty gentlemen I was tucked between throughout were representative of much of the crowd, high-fiving over the top of me about fifteen years of Buffy (which came out on March 10, 1997), discussing their impassioned thoughts on what Avengers might bring, and laughing (really) loudly and knowingly at every in-joke they could decipher. But I never got into Buffy, I’m not a horror film groupie, and I certainly didn’t get all the references – and by the close of this film, which ends in a cathartic (but peculiarly amoral) blaze, I was cheering with the rest of them.

Steph Harmon