Review- The Cabin in the Woods (2011)

I couldn't help myself but to compare The Cabin in the Woods to Scream. They both play off of the audience's anticipations and expectations and both walk the line perfectly between scares and humor. However, while Scream parodies the horror genre, The Cabin in the Woods does more to celebrate it. Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard love horror films enough to want to change them.

I don't want to give anything away, but let me just say that this film is very, very clever. The characters are great, the scares are great, the humor works very well with the scares, the acting is great, and the atmosphere is perfect. However, the film crams too much in at the end and rambles for an additional twenty-minutes that I don't really think it needed. These last few scenes become too epic for the film's good, and they feel out of place among the rest, which is like a really really good independent 80s slasher/zombie flick. Imagine if Friday the 13th suddenly tried to become Star Wars in its last act. I would've appreciated a much more subtle approach.

I only feel the need to criticize the last twenty because the first seventy are so great. Multiple horror-movie-references (including a fifteen-minute stretch taken right from the Evil Dead series), a smart script, and an engaging storyline all add up to one knock-out horror-comedy. One of the best I've seen so far this year.

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Review- The House by the Cemetery (1981)

Imagine the most annoying kid you can think of in a motion-picture. Think of the red-head from Troll 2, Jake Lloyd from Episode 1, and Veruca Salt all mixed into one kid. Now give that kid a voice that sounds like a fourty-year-old talking in falsetto, and you've got something along the lines of Bob from The House by the Cemetery. Even that's being generous. I am not exaggerating, this child makes me want to rip my teeth out with a pair of tweezers and hammer them into my corneas.

Its a shame, too. This film has some promise. The keyword is some. But any shred of redemption that this film bears is destroyed by the BOB. Focusing on just the film, its typical Lucio Fulci fare. Its slow, at times tense, at other times very boring, and occasionally bloody. The gore here is really good but I can't help but feel like I missed something. Even with the unrated edition, there are only about five deaths, one of which is a bat and one of which is very awkwardly off-screen.

The premise is that there's a creature living in the basement of a creaky old house that comes out to kill people. It's pretty simple, but Fulci wastes his time dealing with Bob's strange powers. I would've liked to see more focus on the monster. And I would've liked to see Bob strangled. Or worse. This movie is almost worth checking out just so you can hear how ridiculous this kid's over-dubbed voice is. But unless you're a hardcore Italian horror fan or under the influence of some kind of substance, I'd stay away from this one.

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Review- Cabin Fever

Allow me to defend this film from a sea of harsh criticisms.

It can't decide whether it wants to be a horror movie or a comedy. As a comedy, it's freaking hilarious. As a horror movie, it's gross, unpredictable, and squirm-inducing. I'm not going to praise a movie for succeeding in what it tried to do. I mean, the Saw films are supposed to gross you out, and they do. Does that mean they are good movies? No. But Cabin Fever should at least warrant some praise for delivering both genuine laughs and scares.

It tackles too much at once, i.e. political, social, and biological overtones. Sure, Cabin Fever can be a little ambitious at times, but it is never boring. I always feel that great movies can be discussed for more than a couple of hours, and my friends and I have discussed this film for many-a-conversation. Don't think of it as cramming, think of it as layering. The film can be analyzed from many different viewpoints, and, most importantly, it never feels overwhelming. However, take a film like Batman Begins, which takes on too much at once, or The Strangers, which would've functioned better as a short. And although Cabin Fever isn't perfect by any means, to say that it's too ambitious would be to criticize practically every first film by a great director. I think Eli Roth will come up with more than a few masterpieces in the future.

The acting sucks. For crying out loud, its an b-movie homage! Whether or not the bad acting is intentional or not doesn't detract from the atmosphere. You really get the feeling that you are watching a film from the 80s or early 70s.

The characters are unlikeable. Okay, so, you're right, this isn't a Tarantino or Coen or Allen film. You don't fall in love with the characters, nor do you need to. I didn't have too much of a problem with anyone. I was surprised that I started liking Brent, who initially seems to be the jackass of the group. Rider Strong's character isn't bad either, and I don't have a hardtime at all relating to him. The only problem I could see was with Jordan Ladd's part, but she exits from focus after a while.

WTF is up with the Kung-Fu Pancakes scene? I don't know. And I don't really care. I thought it was really funny, and it seems to me to be an homage to films with unexplainable moments such as the popcorn scene in Troll 2, the bear-costume scene in The Shining (which is referenced later in Cabin Fever with the guy in the bunny suit), the deer-head scene in Evil Dead 2, the zombie vs. shark scene in Zombi 2, the tunnel scene in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, the candy-bar-ax scene in Friday the 13th Part IV, or the Kung-Fu scene from Pieces. So it's weird. Why have audiences gotten so nit-picky?

I love the film. Paired with The Devil's Rejects, Trick'r'Treat, Slither, and Shaun of the Dead, I may even consider it to be one of my favorites of the '00s. All I can say to audiences is, quit band-wagoning. I think that Alien was a little overpraised and Halloween III: Season of the Witch was destroyed because audiences can't form their own opinions and have to turn to critics for the answer.

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