CABIN IN THE WOODS, THE

CABIN IN THE WOODS, THE. Drew Goddard, dir., co-script, with Joss Whedon. USA: AFX Studios, MGM, Mutant Enemy, UA (prod.) / Lionsgate (US dist.), 2011/2012; see IMDb for details on dist. and release dates. Filmed in BC, Canada.

Listed on IMDb as "Horror / Thriller"; more exactly, or pedantically, it's a metacinematc commentary on the horror genre, done with touches of wry humor and buckets of blood. The most basic premise is a Lovecraftian world where the Elder Gods ("the Ancient Ones") are appeased with sacrifices of the young, in the US part of the operation, young who correspond to the standard 20-somethings (sometimes passing for younger) who go to The Cabin in the Woods or other isolated place to be slaughtered one by one: e.g., see PSYCHOTICA (Canada, 2010), and perhaps buy several copies (Rich Erlich, assoc. prod.). Relevant here (1) because the cabin is part of a stage set under constant high-tech surveillance (cf. THE TRUMAN SHOW), and in which the observers can strongly influence the action (cf.HUNGER GAMES), and (2) for images of containment within mechanisms. Note blood of victims symbolically and/or literally squeezed out of them by very large clockwork devices, and final survivors on a kind of train-ride-of-horror in a moving cube (cf. CUBE). The imagery of the settings is complex and significant. On the surface is the beautiful countryside of British Columbia, with the main setting reached through a portal that looks and is a natural-enough tunnel but is surveilled and mined to explode. The killing-field reached through this passage is woods contained in what may be a huge Buckminster-Fuller dome, with clearly-visible hexagonal building elements — and which blocks view of the stars. In the earth of the woods, however, are — in this iteration of the ritual — buried members of a family of "redneck zombies" (quoting from memory). In the cellar of the Cabin are, of course, traditional slasher-film props and paraphernalia; below this, however, is the high-tech world of the "puppeteers," manipulating the victims to their deaths. The everyday monsters of horror movies and nightmares are within the human-made buildings and mechanisms of the human controllers; at their foundation, however, are the ancient malevolent gods whom/that they serve.

5. DRAMA, RDE, 15/IV/12