History Headscratchers / TheCabinInTheWoods

** So much of the arguing over the ending is flawed since we have to depend on the word of {{Unreliable Narrator}}s who'd have unsurprisingly claim that what they do is the only way since it'd be easier on their consciences. We do not know if the Ancient Ones are unbeatable or if the movie is just a case of tradition combined with fear holding man back. And even if they are, we're repeatedly shown that the facility is sloppily run (hence the big red button that unleashes all the monsters) which if anything shows that sooner or later they'd screw-up and doom the world anyway.

* And continuing from above: when Dana is a monster now, what's going to happenF to her? Or does it only count when she's transformed?

** Or his containment cube got parked next to the killer robot's at some point, and he ''really'' liked the look of its tail.

*** {{Ringu}} may very well have been the successful ritual for that year in-'Verse. Remember the Japanese had a flawless record up to this point.

** The school girls and frog, no idea. But the StringyHairedGhostGirl seems to be a reference to Film/Ringu.

** SFDebris suggested a good one for this; "Purge" may have been intended to destroy all the monsters in their cells in an emergency and then bring down the cells to be cleaned out. However Marty had been messing with the wires for half the movie so it's not unreasonable to think he screwed up the system so the "kill" function failed to activate but the "open cell for cleaning" function still happened.

** SFDebris suggested a good one for this; "Purge" may have been intended to destroy all the monsters in their cells in an emergency and then bring down the cells to be cleaned out. However Marty had been messing with the wires for half the movie so it's not unreasonable to think he screwed up the system so the "kill" function failed to activate but the "open cell for cleaning" function did.

** The Buckners are described as "pain worshippers", so perhaps they like to kill their victims slowly and as painfully as possible. They deliberately make their first attack non-lethal when they can.

*** In the novelization, Sitterson is well aware that there will be new demands placed upon humaanity as a punishment, even if they ''do'' kill Marty in time (e.g. there might have to be ''two'' sacrificial rituals per year), but he's too busy trying to complete '''this''' ritual to worry about the next one.

** Simple: Dana and Marty are DoomedMoralVictors.

*** But the Controllers are not "doing the same thing and expecting different results." The entirety of the operation is based on doing the same thing and expecting ''the same results'', because the results in question ''prevent the destruction of the world.'' "Seeing what comes next" is going to result in one of two things: Utter destruction of everything or a world where some other lifeform emerges and becomes dominant, a lifeform that will return to the performance of ritual murder because they'll still have to deal with the Ancient Ones, who given what little we know of them will likely continue to exist for as long as the world exists. In the case of destruction, "what comes next" is nonexistence; in the case of a new dominant lifeform, the cycle simply continues, only there's 7 billion people gone because two traumatized teenagers decided that if they and their friends had to die everyone else might as well die with them. Additionally, if the Organization's "moral flaw" is that they expect the sacrifices to die without giving them the chance to make that choice, what makes Dana and Marty any better? Not only do they condemn a planet's worth of people to, at best, a quick death (at worst an extended torture, given the Ancient Ones' apparent power and tastes in entertainment) but they give the rest of the world even less choice than they themselves were given: They had the choice to turn back after encountering Mordecai, despite not knowing the stakes at the time. The rest of the world doesn't even get that much from our two brave heroes, and this mass death isn't even a sacrifice because that would mean an expectation that something good would result; when the ritual sacrifices die, it's to preserve the world. When Marty and Dana let the world end it's because they've given up, not enough to simply die but apparently enough to take everyone with them. Ultimately, Marty and Dana ''didn't'' accept their fate, even or especially after the Director explained why it was necessary. The argument that they were somehow representative of "the real human community" or that they "understood mature decision-making" or "had superior moral courage" is hollow because we see none of that demonstrated at the end. When confronted with the reason, when they knew that these deaths were required to prevent the End of the World, they didn't take a second to think about all the people they were condemning to likely worse torment and death than what happened to their friends. Dana and Marty ''are'' murdering and torturing others by proxy, just like the Controllers, but on a vastly larger scale, without the intention of creating something better. Their actions are less a temper tantrum and more the sulking of children: If I can't go to recess (that is, live happily ignorant), then the rest of the class can't either. In fact, Marty and Dana's actions are far closer to those of the Ancient Ones: By the end of the movie, they're content to destroy everything without thought for anyone else because things don't or can't go the way they want it to. Dana and Marty's decision may be understandable, given everything they've been through, but it's nothing but reflexive action at best, utter selfishness at worst.

From my own perspective, we're only told how bad the Ancient Ones are by people who are afraid of them and have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo, and who are shown to be fairly impotent in a number of ways (Hadley's having fertility issues, and is generally hostile to the changes a child will bring; the youth having sex vs. the older ones just watching/talking about it, and hostile to real sex; plenty of other examples; on a meta-level Sigourney Weaver's casting alludes to "Alien" and the rape/victimization terror sexuality there, plus the Evil Dead rape trees, all that) vs. the maybe a bit unhealthy (Dana sleeping with her professor) but potent and fertile sexuality of the protagonists. Even sexual potency aside, the information, the basic courage and effectiveness of The Organization in fighting the monsters is definitely not unquestionable. How inviolate can the "rules" be, how "unstoppable" are the monsters and Ancient Ones and how "inevitable" can the end of the world be if a classroom full of 9 year old girls can derail their plans? They didn't even have automatic weapons. They turned a ghost into a happy frog with just teamwork and joy and all they got for it was invective(s) from Gary.