The Cabin in the Woods (R)

Directed by Drew Goddard
Written by Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard


Apparently, Joss Whedon has a cult following. I'm not exactly sure how though. It's not that he's bad at what he does, it's just I don't see what he's done to earn such trust within this fan base. The first I heard of this following is when a group of my friends got super excited to see this film. I was dumbfounded since the title isn't a title that makes me interested in the film and the trailer sets it up to be another teenagers getting murdered story that we've all seen a hundred times over in practically every horror film ever made. I asked why they were excited to see it and they said, "because Joss Whedon wrote it and I trust him completely to do a great job." I mean, he did the TV shows "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Firefly" which I've heard good things about I guess. But in film, he's only really so-so. He co-wrote Speed which I've heard is good and he was the writer-director for Serenity which was alright. My favorite of his film credits is Toy Story. That's right, he co-wrote Toy Story. But that isn't that well known among my Joss Whedon fan friends. Other than that, he wrote or co-wrote Alien Resurrection, Titan A.E., Atlantis - The Lost Empire, and the Buffy movie, none of which were terribly good. So I wasn't sure where the absolute faith was coming from. Then I looked at some early reviews for The Cabin in the Woods and I heard good things. So I gave it a shot when my friends went to see it on its opening weekend. And let me tell you, I'm glad I did. The trailer does not do the story justice at all. The trailer makes it seem like another teenagers getting murdered in the woods story but it is so much more than that. It pays homage to teen slasher flicks while parodying them at the same time. It is quite refreshing to see a horror film that doesn't take itself too seriously. It's fifty percent horror film and fifty percent comedy. The comedy soars and the horror holds its own. There's a second part to the plot that the trailer doesn't reveal that creates a lot of comedy and makes the horror feel fresh and unique. Because the trailer and the filmmakers don't reveal more than that, I won't either. As for the other plot, there's your typical five teen horror lineup - a whore, a jock, a stoner, a brainiac, and a good girl. They decide to take a weekend excursion to this cabin in the woods that the jock's cousin owns. A horror movie ensues. I know it sounds pretty simple without the other elements that add so much enjoyment to the film but I'm determined not to reveal anything that might spoil it for you. The ending may leave a little something to be desired for some people, but the first two acts make it bearable. The acting is nothing special, but it gets the job done. The direction is the same way. It's the story that is special here. I've been waiting for a horror movie like this my whole life. I'm not the biggest horror movie fan in the world. I'll watch them, but probably only once. If I watch a horror movie a second time, it's most likely because of the people I'd be watching it with rather than the movie itself. For me, the scares disappear after the first viewing and the scares are the only reason to watch a horror movie. This horror movie is one that I might want to watch again for the content. Maybe the scares aren't as scary as they were the first time I watched it, but the laughs are still worth watching it again for. At the end of the day, I'd recommend giving this one a try.


Scores (out of 10)
Acting: 7.5
Directing: 7
Writing: 8


Overall: 8

Top Ten Movie Villains

10) King Edward the Longshanks
Patrick McGoohan, Braveheart
This guy is the epitome of not cool. The real King Edward I was ruthless. In the movie, he's not only ruthless, but sadistic and more importantly, he's a terrible father. He hates everybody. And he's not exactly well liked himself. He was trying to crush freedom and impose tyranny, which, as Americans, kind of pisses us off.

9)   The Shark
Bruce, Jaws
Pure killing machine. All it does is eat people and swim. The only thing that knocks it down to number nine is that it's not particularly malicious. It's just surviving. And it looks fake. It looked fake in 1975 and it still looks fake. But even a fake looking shark was able to drive beach attendance down for years to come after the release of Jaws. And no matter how fake the shark looked, it terrified people of the open water by the theaterfull. You just can't argue with results.

8)   Cruella De Vil
voice of Betty Lou Gerson, 101 Dalmatians
A Disney villain was destined to appear on this list, and few Disney villains can compete with Cruella. For starters, her name includes the words "cruel" and "devil" in it. And then there's her dastardly plan: to make fur coats out of adorable dalmatian puppies. The logic of using puppies is all the more disturbing since you'd probably be able to create more coats out of fully grown dogs. Bigger dogs = more fur = more coats? Or maybe we're just crazy. But the thing that cements her as a top villain is the song. There is an entire song about how evil this character is even before she has any screen time. I can't think of another song that is dedicated to revealing the evil nature of a movie character, and for a list of villains, that's something that makes Cruella stand out.

7)   Adolf Hitler
Martin Wuttke, Inglourious Basterds
To be honest, this one is here more for what the actual person was involved with rather than the movie character. But as far as we're concerned, no compilation of villains is complete without Hitler; thus, his position on this list.

6)   HAL 9000
voice of Douglas Rain, 2001: A Space Odyssey
The cold, high voice was so calm that it had to have evil intentions. Whatever argument you want to make about HAL's malfunction not warranting the evil label, you're wrong. This computer was possessed by an evil force. Our proof: only Bowman and Poole were discussing shutting HAL off, so why the hell did he kill the other three crew members in hibernation? No excuse for that. Programmed evil. And the Daisy song was really creepy. The weirdest thing about this character is that he was perhaps more humanly emotional than his human counterparts.

5)   Pazuzu
Linda Blair voiced by Mercedes McCambridge, The Exorcist

For this guy, I’m going to start you off with an image. Imagine the mass murderer who skins his victims alive, and devours them while they are screaming, drinks their blood, all the fun stuff. Now multiply the bad in this maniac by about 100 times and that’s Pazuzu. Pazuzu is an African demon who first appeared in The Exorcist and appeared in the sequels and prequel as well. Released by the elder priest Lankester Merrin, this thing is the last person/demon/thing you want to see coming at you. WHY? Because you can’t see him coming. He is a supernatural force that wants one thing, the sound of you screaming and dying. Many people develop into the monsters that terrorize others, but Pazuzu was created to be one thing: a curse upon mankind. He was imprisoned in a tomb until released, and he killed the entire village that was situated around the tomb. I do not really know what else to say then, this thing is just bad. The Exorcist was originally a book, and Pazuzu did some stuff so bad that they couldn’t put it in the movie. The book scared me more than the movie! It was that bad. So in closing, this thing/spirit is bad, mkay?

4)   Norman Bates
Anthony Perkins, Psycho
"A boy's best friend is his mother." Never has such a memorable quote been so untrue. I don't know a single male on the face of the planet that would verify that statement. We all love our mothers, but best friend is a stretch of unimaginable proportions. But that isn't why Norman Bates is so high on this list. He's here because (SPOILER ALERT) he's freaking crazy as a penguin in the Sahara. And not just crazy, but violently crazy. (SERIOUSLY, SPOILER ALERT, DON'T READ ON IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW YET) He stabs people wearing his mother's clothes. And despite only witnessing one incident in the film, I think it's safe to assume that it has happened many times before.

3)   Darth Vader
David Prowse voiced by James Earl Jones, Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back
He is perhaps the most iconic villain on this or any list of movie characters. The breathing. The suit. The voice. The quotes. The theme song. Nearly everybody is familiar with Darth Vader in some way. The big knock on Vader is that he does turn out to be kind of a softy in Return of the Jedi. But for the first two films, he embodies pure evil to the point of not being human anymore. First, he kills the hero's mentor, one of the best wise old dudes in movie history. After that, he provides the ultimate example of tough parenting by cutting off his son's hand. And for that, he ranks near the top of any villains list.

2)   The Joker
Jack Nicholson in Batman and/or Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight
Here comes the interactive portion of the list. No consensus will ever be reached about which iconic portrayal of the Joker is the best. New wave kids tend to favor Ledger's performance for the gritty realism and disturbed manner while classic lovers will tend to lean toward the Nicholson performance because of the off the wall manic psychosis and how it resembles the comic book more faithfully. Since most people tend to absolutely love one or the other, we have justified his place on this list, provided that you pick your favorite performance as the final winner for yourself. Because the one thing we can all agree on is that The Joker (whether he is played Nicholson or Ledger) belongs in this spot.

1)   Dr. Hannibal Lecter
Anthony Hopkins, The Silence of the Lambs
There was never any doubt in our minds. This character is nearly a perfect villain. There is no reason we should sympathize with him, but throughout the course of the movie, we all begin to root for Hannibal Lecter. The cadence of his speech, the accent, his tone, everything is just so unsettling and yet you can't look away. He's a cannibalistic serial killer; he rips very personal information from the hero in a despicable way. And yet, he defends her honor and helps her catch a disturbing serial killer. Ultimately, it comes down to the stare. You know the one I mean. The one where he is staring straight into your soul through the screen and the camera and into your very being. It's difficult to hold your gaze when watching it. You really feel the unrelenting stare pierce you and you can't help but feel it. Brad walked by a TV once and had a mini freak-out for a split second because that shot was on the screen. Proof that Lecter belongs at number one on any list of the greatest movie villains.

The Hunger Games (PG-13)

Directed by Gary Ross
Written by Suzanne Collins, Gary Ross, and Billy Ray

In one of the most highly anticipated movies of the year (right up there with The Avengers, The Dark Knight Rises, and the first installment of The Hobbit), The Hunger Games had a lot to live up to. Being a the most recent of wildly popular book series for young adults being turned into a major movie franchise, I probably don’t need to tell you the plot, but just in case, here’s the gist: As a sick, twisted punishment, the government of a post-apocalyptic North American nation known as Panem forces the impoverished 12 districts to offer up one 12-18 year old girl and boy to compete in a fight to the death tournament in a vast arena. In this specific Hunger Games, young Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) is the female tribute from District 12 and the story follows her journey through the games. As someone who has read the series, I was curious as to how a movie franchise would be made. Because of the visual nature of movies, the violence of the book was sure to warrant an R rating in movie form to me, which would effectively make sure that the target audience wouldn’t be able to see it in theaters. Obviously, that wasn’t going to happen so the filmmakers had to make sure they got a PG-13 rating. In order to do that, they would have to tone down the graphic violence that made the book as powerful as it was. So I went into the theater with low expectations and felt that the movie would have to make the best of the violence they could show. I was wrong. I was amazed at how well they were able to show the violence in such a graphic nature and still make a PG-13 rating. The violence was as powerful in film as it was on the page. The role of Katniss was vital and in my opinion, Jennifer Lawrence pulls it off with flying colors. It was reminiscent of her Oscar-nominated role in Winter’s Bone as a protective older sister who is a tough-as-nails teen with survival skills in bad living conditions. Woody Harrelson gives a good performance as Katniss’s perpetually drunk mentor and previous Hunger Games winner, Haymitch Abernathy. The other vital role was that of the male tribute from District 12, Peeta Mellark, played by Josh Hutcherson. Hutcherson doesn’t shine, but he doesn’t ruin anything either, which may disappoint those who were really fans of the Peeta character as I was. As far as the other performances go, nothing too special. The villains are villainous, the sidekicks are heroic, and the comic relief is humorous enough. As for the direction, director Gary Ross failed to ruin the film, but it sure seems like he tried. Obviously he thinks shaking the camera like it’s in a hurricane makes viewers feel more excited about a sequence that he deems boring, but he’s wrong. It’s distracting. Shaking the camera does not make it any more exciting. It just makes it difficult for the viewer to understand what it is that he or she is seeing. But as I said, it doesn’t ruin the movie. The movie is still enjoyable with an absolutely fascinating story and engaging characters. Those aspects were handled quite well. A sequel is planned for release late next year, and I plan to see it. Overall: Well done.


Scores, all out of 10

Acting: 7.5

Directing: 6

Writing: 7

Overall: 8.5