Dir: Joss Wheedon
Cast: Chris Hemsworth, Fran Kranz, Kristen Connolly
Again I obtained free tickets to see this film thanks to Sky. I really wanted to watch this anyway and (after having been told) made sure I knew as little about it as possible. All I did know was it was a horror film directed by Joss Wheedon and starred Chris Hemsworth.
SPOILERS!!!!
So the film starts off with two men, Sitterson (Richard Jenkins) and Hadley (Bradley Whitford) who seem to be at work, they are just having a normal, rather mundane chat. Someone informs them that there has been an incident in a similar facility in another country. They do not seem to mind and say something rather puzzling about the US always coming in second. We then cut to some college students getting really to go on a trip to, surprise, a cabin in the woods. There are 5 people, Jules (Anna Hutchinson), her boyfriend Curt (Chris Hensworth), his friend Holden (Jesse Williams), Jules friend and potential date of Holden, Dana (Kristen Connolly) and their stoner friend Marty (Fran Kranz). We soon see that the two men from the beginning of the film are following the group and taking some bizarre bets for a still unknown reason with other workers in some huge office. The group stop for petrol and are greeted by the stereotypical Southern creepy old man who warns them about the cabin. The gang laugh it off and continue on their journey. Here we witness another bizarre happening, a bird flys into an invisible electric "fence" and falls to its death. Once in the cabin the gang chill out and decide to play Truth or Dare. Suddenly the cellar door opens up and one of the dares is to go down there. All the gang end up there and discover all sorts of weird and wonderful things. Dana starts reading a girls diary, the girl was abused by her father and there is a Latin phrase in it which she explains will bring her and her family back to life. Dana of course reads the Latin and lo and behold zombies appear outside, not just any zombies but redneck ones! The men in the office seem disappointed and we realise the bets were on which monsters the gang would conjure up. Hadley really wanted a mer-man. Even though I have mentioned this has spoilers I don't really want to or feel I need to discuss more of the plot and to just write about why I like it!
This film was awesome! Yes it was bonkers and totally far fetched but that was the whole point! I loved all the nods to almost every horror film you can think of, even the more thriller ones. My fave scene was obviously the bit in the lift and what comes out of it, this is because it was stunning to watch and you literally had no idea what you would see next. My favorite monster was the guy who was a nod to pinhead in Hellraiser. He said nothing, just stood there and if you've seen him you'll know that is enough! The fact it took the horror genre and made not just a spoof of it but also a sort of social commentary on it I thought was genius. You had the typical Jock, Nerd, Virgin etc. you also had a mild form of reality TV thrown in and even some found footage. Then at the end you get a rather bleak ending but it doesn't seem anything like a downer. I know some people who didn't like the film purely for it being too far fetched and even stupid. Which I suppose is a fair point but I've seen other films just as much far fetched and also enough horror to get the references. The funniest thing of all was that it felt new and refreshing when almost every part was taken from another film in some way. This is postmodernism done right.
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