When it comes to highly anticipated movies, this year is off the charts. The Dark Knight Rises. The Avengers. The first half of The Hobbit. Spielberg's Lincoln. Tarantino's Django Unchained. And hopefully Paul Thomas Anderson's The Master. It's enough to make a movie geek's head explode. Yet, strangely enough, right now I find myself looking more forward to The Cabin in the Woods, a tiny April horror film, than any of them. Sure, part of that is because it'll be first out of the gate, beating The Avengers by a few weeks, but there are so many other reasons why Cabin has been the only flick on my mind for days upon days now. Let's count 'em down:
1. Joss Whedon conceived, co-wrote and produced this thing. Whedon will get bigger press this summer as the writer-director on The Avengers, but that's clearly a case of the guy getting to fool around in somebody else's playground for a while. Should be fun, but I figure Cabin will be the purer Whedon concoction. As Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Firefly proved, he's one of the best world-builders we've got. And word has it that Cabin, which was co-written and directed by former Buffy scribe Drew Goddard, deconstructs the horror genre in all manner of entertaining new ways. I strongly support putting Whedon in charge of the occasional summer tentpole, but it's what he forges on his own, from the ground up, with his own stable of creatives, that gets me really excited.
2. Cabin is supposedly a direct response to (and rebuff of) torture porn. Whedon was quoted in a recent Entertainment Weekly story as saying, "We've had a growing disconnect between watching people getting murdered and 'horror,' which is not actually about murder. It can contain murder, but it's not limited to it. We wanted to go back to old-school thrilling scares." What that boils down to is this: Whedon has the same taste in horror movies that I do. It's not about the violence. It's not about excess and what you can get away with. Instead, it's about mood. It's about shocking the audience with narrative instead of bloodletting. It's about telling a story that connects on both a visceral and emotional level. Whedon and Goddard apparently get this. I wish more horror filmmakers would follow suit.
3. The cast is awesome. Yeah, Cabin's got Thor himself, Chris Hemsworth, plus a gaggle of fit, fresh-faced twentysomethings. But it's also got Richard Jenkins (never not wonderful), Bradley Whitford (ruling your ass from Billy Madison all the way to The West Wing) and a bunch of Whedon repertory players like Fran Kranz (Dollhouse), Amy Acker (Angel) and Tom Lenk (Buffy). That's a considerably more unique and exciting group of folks than usually show up in a typical low-budget horror film. I can't wait to see how Jenkins and Whitford fit into this funhouse.
4. I've been waiting on this movie for way too long. Cabin was originally shot all the way back in 2009 for MGM. But it was delayed for a 3D transfer (which ultimately wasn't finished), then shelved when MGM went bankrupt, then caught in post-bankruptcy purgatory. For a while, folks wondered if the thing would ever get released. Thankfully, Lionsgate picked the film up, saving the day. Gold star to them.
5. People who have seen it say it's great. The movie finally debuted at the South by Southwest Festival a few weeks back, and the early word is extremely enthusiastic. I've been hesitant to do more than skim through the longer reviews. Apparently, the less you know about Cabin going in, the more you'll be tickled by the surprises up its sleeve. But those in my twitter feed who have seen it have done nothing but rave, and the film is at 94 percent at Rotten Tomatoes as of today. By almost all accounts so far, the movie delivers.
Now if I could just see the damn thing …
