Characters / The Cabin in the Woods

As a note: We can't really get into the tropes without spoiling damn near the entire film. No spoilers are tagged below to avoid a page of white.

The College Kids

Dana

Dana Polk (The Virgin)

"Let's get this party started."

Played By: Kristen Connolly

• Action Survivor: She gets attacked by murderous torture zombies and sees most of her friends get killed by them, and still manages to emerge for the grand finale. Hadley even admires her will to live.

• Apologetic Attacker: After she's told that (as the Final Girl) she must kill Marty, the only other survivor of their Targeted Human Sacrifice, to prevent the Ancient Ones from rising and bringing on The End of the World as We Know It, Dana says, "I'm sorry" as she wills herself to shoot her friend. Mary, seeing a werewolf sneaking up behind her, says "So am I." Cue Conveniently Timed Attack from Behind.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Dana is a nice young lady, but she's still willing to kill Marty, albeit for the greater good.
• Break the Cutie: Most of the film, as is typical and expected of the genre, is designed to breed dread in the survivors. Indeed, her death is optional to the ritual.

• Covert Pervert: After switching rooms with Holden because he decided to reveal the two-way mirror between their rooms, she watches Holden getting shirtless before having a similar attack of conscience and covering the mirror.
• Decoy Protagonist: While engineered by the plot to be the Final Girl, it's Marty who does all of the thinking and heroics during the climax of the movie while she mostly freaks out. She starts to pull it together toward the end, but by that point the world is literally minutes away from ending.
• Despair Event Horizon: By the end of the film, she's left utterly broken psychologically, to the point that she's fine with letting the world end, deciding that humanity isn't worth preserving over a few sacrifices.
• Final Girl: An Enforced Trope. She's designated as "The Virgin", so Sitterson and Hadley push her to survive the longest.
• The Hero: One of the two who survive their ordeal to the end, and ultimately makes the decision to end the world rather than continue the Human Sacrifice rituals (granted, she does point a gun at Marty after hearing what the Director says on how the sacrifices are necessary).
• Heroic BSoD: Dana is rendered borderline catatonic after watching most of her friends being murdered and being swung around by the largest zombie. She snaps out of it to push the Big Red Button that releases all the Organization's monsters.
• Humans Are Bastards: At the end of the film, having learned that the Organization essentially performs elaborate Human Sacrifices to keep the human race alive, she tells Marty that it's time to give someone else a chance.
• Non-Indicative Name: Despite being referred to as "The Virgin", she's not a virgin, having had an affair with her professor.
• One Last Smoke: At the end of the film, she shares a last joint with Marty before the apocalypse that they willfully allowed to happen.
• Straw Nihilist: By the end of one long night of slaughter and pain, she's mortally wounded and tired enough to decide a world hit by oblivion is not a bad thing.
• Suicidal Cosmic Temper Tantrum: She throws one together with Marty by refusing to be a part of a Heroic Sacrifice, having been so traumatized by the tortures they've been subjected to that they decide that humanity deserves to die at the hands of the Ancient Ones if it needs to keep practicing such cruel rituals to appease them in order to survive. It should be noted, though, that she does point a gun at Marty and has to be mangled by a werewolf to drop said gun (and we only have her word for it that she would not have shot him when she's bleeding out and about to die with Marty no matter what happens to the world).
• Took a Level in Badass: Played With. This girl goes from helplessly screaming as Mr. Buckner nearly makes quick work out of her to a dagger-wielding fighter who stabs one of the workers in the organization who orchestrated the demise of her and her friends. Unfortunately, she ends up catatonic over everything and allows the world to end.

Curt

Curt Vaughan (The Athlete)

"You should read this: Gurovsky. Now, this is way more interesting. Also, Bennett doesn't know it by heart so he'll think you're insightful. And you have no pants."

Played By: Chris Hemsworth

• The Ace: Curt is handsome, athletic, intelligent, and an all-round competent guy. He probably could have led them all out of danger if it wasn't for the various manipulations put in place to stack the deck against him.
• Badass Biker: He tries to jump a gorge with his motorcycle to get help against the zombies attacking the group, and if it wasn't for that Invisible Wall, he might have actually pulled it off.
• The Big Guy: He's tall, athletic, and does much of the physical work.
• Deadpan Snarker: A little friendlier than some guys in the organization, but he still points out some wry remarks to his friends.

• Genius Bruiser: He's a great athlete, but also a sociology major with a full academic scholarship. The overseers manipulate him into acting like Dumb Muscle instead.

• Minored in Ass-Kicking: He's in school on a full academic scholarship and shows more interest in studies than sports, but he is on the football team and in shape.
• Nice Guy: He's shown at the beginning of the movie to be a funny, intelligent, and all around good guy who's very supportive of his friends. His niceness seems to make him the center of the group. He knows Marty and Holden from different social areas and is dating Jules, who's friends with Dana.
• Senseless Sacrifice: His attempt to leave for help with a dangerous bike stunt backfires hilariously when he hits the Invisible Wall surrounding the cabin and gets electrocuted, accomplishing nothing besides revealing to the heroes that they're trapped.

Jules

Jules Louden (The Whore)

"'Soviet Economic Structures'? 'Aftermath of the Cul-'... No! We have a lake! And a keg! No more learning!"

Played By: Anna Hutchison

• Deadpan Snarker: In a lot of her earlier dialogue, she responds to Marty's taunts with sarcasm.
• Decapitation Presentation: Father Buckner throws her bloody, decapitated head at Dana.
• Dumb Blonde: Enforced; she's neither naturally dumb (being a pre-med student) nor blonde^note Ironically her actress Anna Hutchinson is a natural blonde.. The blonde dye she uses is poisoned by people from the Organization, dampening her intelligence.
• Hard-Drinking Party Girl: She's brainwashed into becoming this, prompting Marty to wonder why she's doing sexy dances all of a sudden.

• Slashers Prefer Blondes: Having dyed her hair blonde at the start of the film, she's locked as the first victim. Notably, Kristen Connolly is a blonde, and she dyed her hair red to play Dana.
• Team Mom: Her original role, considering her disapproval with Dana's affair with a professor. Unfortunately, the Controllers have already started altering her into a Dumb Blonde Ms. Fanservice by the time the film starts, so only hints of this appear.
• We Hardly Knew Ye: She's the first of the group to die, although we do get forty minutes with her.

Marty

Marty Mikalski (The Fool)

"Statistical fact: Cops will never pull over a man with a huge bong in his car. Why? They fear this man. They know he sees farther than they and he will bind them with ancient logics."

Played By: Fran Kranz

• Acquired Poison Immunity: An example of this happening unintentionally. The Organization's chemistry-team forgot to account for Marty's home-made bong (as it was disguised as a coffee mug) when they tried to lace his stash with the intelligence-dampening drugs. As a result, Marty was given a constant, but only minor dose of the drug, which allowed him to build up some resistance against the mind-controlling drugs, leading to him gradually getting more and more clear-headed and able to see through the Organization's deception.
• Alliterative Name: Marty Mikalski.
• Big Damn Heroes: After getting dragged off seemingly to his death by Judah Buckner, he's later revealed to have survived when he makes a triumphant return to save Dana from getting killed by Pa Buckner by using his bong as an Improvised Weapon.
• Break the Comedian: Characterized by the Organization as "The Fool", and fits the role through a mixture of whimsical rambling and dedicated bong-smoking. Being put through the wringer gradually eats away at his humour, until he's too traumatized to even employ it as self-defense mechanism. For good measure, the ending destroys what little idealism he possesses, leaving him in a position in which he could be able save the world — but thanks to everything he and Dana have suffered, he doesn't think it's worth saving anymore.
• The Coats Are Off: Word of God is that the reason he dresses in many layers and isn't shirtless in the lake scene is because Kranz was in as much shape as the other leads, and they wanted him to seem weaker. While the actual moment of this trope happens off screen, when he gets his Big Damn Heroes moment, he's stripped to form-fitting clothes, showing off a more muscular physique for his transition into The Hero.
• Combat Pragmatist: His weed smoking bong isn't only an instrument to get him high but also a very efficient weapon of choice to save Dana.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Despite being high for the entire movie, he's the only one to actually win a confrontation with the Buckners.
• The Cuckoolander Was Right: Despite being a stoner with all the lack of coherency that implies, Marty is surprisingly on the money about a lot of things about the protagonists' situation even before it starts to go to hell. Apparently, his pot has made him mostly immune to the controllers' attempts to control him.

• The Fool: Marty is called this by many, but he surprisingly fits into the Tarot archetype beyond just being a hippie stoner — he manages to succeed where others fail, often by pure luck.

• Hidden Depths: Despite seeming to just be a directionless stoner, he's shown to be astoundingly philosophical during the final scene. Before that he proves to be both great at thinking on his feet and a surprisingly adept fighter. In fact, his introduction presents him as being close friends with Curt, the guy with a full academic scholarship for sociology, so they likely met through class.
• Killed Offscreen: Subverted. He's incapacitated and dragged offscreen by one of the Buckners to be killed, and the Controllers assume he died a gruesome death. It turns out that they really should have made sure, because while he's gone he dispatches the zombie, finds an entrance to the Organization's HQ, mucks up the tunnel's demolition by fiddling with the wiring, and goes back to save Dana from Pa Buckner. No offscreen inertia here, folks.
• The Lancer: In a way, given that Dana is the one getting the most focus and he's her support.
• Not Quite Dead: He seems to have died at one of the Buckners' hands, until his Big Damn Heroes moment when he saves Dana.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: When one of the Buckners attacks and apparently kills him, he not only survives, but neutralizes the zombie by dismembering him with a trowel, offscreen. And of course this is a surprise to everybody, including the people in the Control Room.
• One Last Smoke: He shares a blunt with Dana while waiting for the world to end.
• Only Sane Man: Marty keeps cautioning the group against actions like reading the mysterious Latin. His pot-smoking has made him Properly Paranoid as well as resistant to the mind-altering chemicals used by the villains — mainly due to a mistake on their part.
• Spanner in the Works: He singlehandedly ruins the entire Ancient Conspiracy simply by staying alive until sunrise. Not to mention he saves Dana and helps unleash a whole lot of ironic death upon the controllers, mostly due to dumb luck.
• The Stoner: Always seen stoned and never taken seriously, though he happens to be the most sensible person in the whole film.

• Wrong Genre Savvy: Even after encountering the Buckner zombies, Marty finds a hidden camera and concludes, "I'm on a reality TV show!", which would be the logical conclusion to come to if you were assaulted by what appears to be zombies and then discovered a hidden camera in your in room... if you were in a more grounded and realistic comedy, as opposed to one that's also a horror film.

Holden

Holden McCrea (The Scholar)

"Do I lose points if I tell you I'm having a really nice time?"

Played By: Jesse Williams

• Badass Decay: Invoked. He's in college on a full athletic scholarship for football, and is in amazing shape. The Organization forces him into the role of the nerd, sidelining his physical prowess.
• Covert Pervert: When he finds a two-way mirror that gives him a view of Dana, he lingers for a moment to enjoy watching her get changed before having an attack of conscience and letting her know.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: Especially in the novelization, where he's still alive, and in pain, after being stabbed in the neck as he drowns.

• The Generic Guy: Almost no personality. Intentional since he's introduced as a jock who's forced to become a nerd, meaning that most of his true personality has likely been deliberately suppressed.
• The Glasses Gotta Go: Inverted. He starts wearing reading glasses after the intelligence-enhancing drugs get to work on him, and it's implied that he was compelled do so to make him look more intellectual and nerdy to fit the role designated to him.

• Nice Guy: Even prior to being manipulated into being a nerd, he's amiable to all of his friends.
• Out of Focus: As the whole movie progresses, Dana and her friends get the spotlight, leaving him with very little screentime.
• Ship Tease: Him and Dana are interested in each other, but the horrors really begins right as they're starting to make out.
• The Quiet One: When manipulated into the nerd, he very rarely speaks.
• We Hardly Knew Ye: Very little screentime and personality. Notable in managing to pull this off while lasting an hour into the movie.
• What You Are in the Dark: He hesitates a bit when he finds out that he can see through Dana's mirror, but ultimately warns her before she actually gets her clothes off.

The Organization

In General

In General

• Anti-Villain: What they do to the sacrifices year after year is absolutely horrible, but if they don't do it, the world will be destroyed and far more people will die. That said, the staff at the facility seem to take an undue amount of satisfaction from watching the kids get slaughtered, though that said, this is heavily implied to be a coping mechanism.
• Corporate Warfare: The Organization has a private army in their employ. The soldiers are numerous and armed to the teeth, but it does them little good against the monsters...
• Industrialized Evil: Their purpose is killing people in basically a sacrifice, and what an incredible infrastructure and organization they have to achieve this.
• Killer Game Master: Their profession is to railroad unwitting sacrifices into a no-win scenario, manipulating every aspect of their environment and mental state so they never even realize they've been set up.
• Necessarily Evil: There aren't many multiple murderers with an argument about the consequences of not doing what they do as solid as "otherwise the world will literally end".
• Punch-Clock Villain: The Organization as a whole. Pretty much all of its employees bear no ill-will whatsoever towards the unfortunate co-eds they're herding to get killed (at least until Marty and Dana begin to become a gradually more serious problem and then even an active threat to them) and in fact largely treat the whole situation with the same professional distance as pretty much any other average Joe would treat their boring day job. But that is not to say that the employees are entirely without scruples. In fact, it is made clear that they are all painfully aware that what they are doing is deeply Dirty Business, but they know that it is the only way to keep the whole of humanity safe from the wrath of the Ancient Ones.

The Director

The Director

"We work with what we have."

Played By: Sigourney Weaver

• Affably Evil: She's very polite when she explains the origins of the sacrificial ritual to Dana and Marty, while trying to goad the former to kill the latter.
• Big Bad: She is the direct cause of all the suffering the leads go through. She leads a team to make sure a rite of sacrificing a specific group of young people following rules and stereotypes of horror movies is done correctly. All to appease the fury of the Ancient Ones and prevent an End of the World scenario.
• Iron Lady: She's the headstrong leader of the Organization, having directed the sacrifice of countless innocents in previous rituals to save the world from the wrath of the Ancient Ones.
• Small Role, Big Impact: She only appears in person near the end, but she's responsible for everything. She almost manages to convince Dana to kill Marty, which would have saved humanity, if not for the werewolf attacking Dana right at that moment.

Sitterson

Gary Sitterson

"Calm down. Watch the master work."

Played By: Richard Jenkins

• Affably Evil: He must sacrifice the college kids to prevent an End of the World scenario, but he's a very cool co-worker you can talk with.
• Bald of Evil: He's a bald man manipulating innocents into getting killed by monsters in the name of the greater good. Of course, there's not much of a difference compared to the other, non-bald members of the Organization, just one likely connected to his age.
• Cluster F-Bomb: Commonly unleashed upon failed scenarios, specially with the Japanese ghost's failure.
  Sitterson: FUUUUUCK YOU! Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you!
• The Cobbler's Children Have No Shoes: According to the novelization, he can't apply his technical brilliance and organizational skills to his home life.
• Consummate Professional: Be it overseeing the day-to-day grind of appeasing the elder gods with ritual sacrifice or running like Hell to jury rig a remote tunnel collapse with two seconds to spare, Sitterson will not rest until the job's done.
• Deadpan Snarker: Once you have seen it all, there is not much to take seriously.
• Dirty Old Man:
  • The older of the two controllers, he takes subtle delight in watching the sacrificial victims having sex, and the novel indicates that he's definitely excited by it.
  • According to the novel, he's sexually attracted to Lin, to the point that he's hoping to exploit the party to get some Glad-to-Be-Alive Sex from her.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Accidentally done by Dana while he's escaping through the tunnels. It's the most merciful death an Organization employee could have instead of being devoured or tortured, although also perhaps the most directly karmic.
• Karmic Death: He is accidentally impaled by one on the victims of the scenario he was overseeing.
• Killer Game Master: Well, it's basically his job to ensure that the people brought to the cabin die, so he will "write" a way for them to bite it by manipulating everything around them, including their minds.
• Mission Control: He's among the folks controlling the cabin setting the kids are staying in.
• Politically Incorrect Villain: In the novel, he's a self-admitted sexist who regards all women as basically insane.
• Punch-Clock Villain: Doesn't really have anything against the kids; he's only having them die at the hands of the Organization's horrors because his company's trying to prevent the world's destruction.

Hadley

Steve Hadley

"I'm never gonna see a merman."

Played By: Bradley Whitford

• Affably Evil: Just like Gary, he's all round amiable and sociable, despite being part of an organization that sacrifices kids to prevent the world's destruction.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: All he wanted was to see a merman in messy action, not to get his face chewed off by one.
  Hadley: Oh, come on!
• Deadpan Snarker: So much that his last words are snarking with disbelief at his ironic bad luck.
• Death by Irony: After spending the entire film wishing he could see a merman, Hadley is finally done in when a merman enters the control room and chews his face off. Hadley is pretty aware of the irony, too; his last words are, "Oh, come on!"
• In-Universe Nickname: "Aquaman", used around betting time as a reference to Hadley's desire to see a merman in action.
• Killer Game Master: The organization he works for specialises in this, and he, as part of it, must manipulate the surroundings to cause the kids to die.
• Mission Control: He's also one of the folks controlling the cabin setting.
• Politically Incorrect Villain: He's a member of an organization that sacrifices people to monsters for the greater good who's pretty vocal in his dislike of the Japanese.
• Punch-Clock Villain: As with majority of the other organization employees, he's only having the kids killed to stop the world from ending.
• Too Annoyed to Be Afraid: In the finale, when the Organization's monsters are all released from containment, Hadley finds himself knocked to the ground and left helpless in the face of an oncoming threat - a Merman. Hadley can only grumble, "Aw, come on!"

Truman

Daniel Truman

Played By: Brian White

• Audience Surrogate: He feels a lot of pity towards the kids. Also, as a new recruit in security, he gets his questions answered about how the Organization works.
  Truman: Monsters, magic...
• Covert Pervert: During Jules' sex scene, Truman can be seen making a few discreet but noticeable glances in the direction of the screens. He is also notably holding a clipboard in front of his crotch in that particular scene.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: He gets disemboweled by Scarecrows, though luckily his grenades cut it short and give him a merciful demise.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Inasmuch as a Punch-Clock Villain can have one, anyway: He takes an armed grenade and blows himself up with the Scarecrows in a bid to allow Hadley to escape.
• Naïve Newcomer: Despite getting the job, he doesn't know very much about how the Organization works until Wendy and the others give him an explanation.
• Punch-Clock Villain: He isn't happy with the Organization's line of work of sacrificing innocents to protect the world, but he still accepted working there.
• Taking You with Me: He turns the Scarecrows attacking him into stacks of hay by blowing both them and himself up with a grenade, which is by all accounts impressive.
• Token Good Teammate: Of all the Controllers, he's the most reluctant one to lead the kids to their doom.

Lin

Wendy Lin

Played By: Amy Acker

• Exit, Pursued by a Bear: Lin is last seen being dragged into the ceiling by an octopus tentacle.
• Ice Queen: Coldly professional, she clearly doesn't suffer fools gladly and barely tolerates Sitterson's smartass remarks.
• Not So Above It All: Though she clearly dislikes immaturity among the staff and joins Truman in disapproving of the betting pool, Lin isn't above placing a bet of her own.
• Phlebotinum-Induced Stupidity: Responsible for the intelligence-lowering chemicals added to Jules' hair dye - which Lin seems quite proud of.
• Tampering with Food and Drink: As the head of the Chem Department, she's in charge of making sure the sacrificial victims are drugged into their roles - and as the novelization reveals, part of this involves some pharmaceutical addition to the beer.

Mordecai

"The Harbinger" aka Mordecai

Played By: Tim DeZarn

• Consummate Professional: He takes his job very seriously, staying in-character and speaking in flowery language even as he contacts the Organization to give updates on the group's movements. He only breaks character briefly in frustration over his co-workers ridiculing him for how seriously he takes his job.
• Creepy Blue Eyes: He has piercing, bloodshot, ice-blue eyes, which definitely helps him in selling his role as a Creepy Gas-Station Attendant to the group.
• Creepy Gas-Station Attendant: What he poses as, as a part of the ritual, being an ominous, tobacco-chewing old man with Creepy Blue Eyes who warns the teens away from the film's eponymous cabin in a flowery fashion. He also has the additional task of spying on the group and making sure they reach their destination.
• Purple Prose: How he speaks when in character, which he is most of the time due to him being a Consummate Professional. Sitterson and Hadley relentlessly make fun of and mock him for this.
  Mordecai: Cleanse them. Cleanse the world of their ignorance and sin. Bathe them in the crimson of... [beat] Am I on speakerphone?
  [...]
  Mordecai: Don't take this lightly, boy. It wasn't all by your numbers. The Fool nearly derailed the invocation with his insolence. The Ancient Ones see everything. And they will not be... I'm still on speakerphone, aren't I?

The Monsters

In General

• Always Chaotic Evil: If they weren't, they wouldn't be much good for ensuring that the Organization's sacrifices are murdered. Justified, for some, because if they weren't depraved they would not have become monsters.
• Artifact of Doom: Each of them have one of these in the basement of the cabin, and whichever one the sacrifices interact with determines which monster kills them.
• Ax-Crazy: Most of the sapient ones could qualify, given that they seem to exist for nothing except to inflict horrible deaths on whomever the Organization sics them at. The ones who used to be humans are especially notable though, given that there's nothing appearance-wise to distract from their brutal behaviour.
• Evil Is One Big, Happy Family: Downplayed: There's no real communication between them, but after being released they all rampage through the facility exclusively attacking humans, and are never seen fighting each other, even the more bestial ones.
• Kill All Humans: One thing all of these vastly varied monsters have in common seems to be that they exist only to kill humans, given that they don't attack each other, only regular people.

Alien Beast

• Alien Blood: Seems to bleed yellow as the guard it attacks fights back.
• Face Hugger: Its Dynamic Entry is going straight for a guard's face.

Angry Molesting Tree

• Combat Tentacles: Can use its branches and its roots like tentacles to assault potential victims. In both the first elevator massacre and the security monitor overview, it can be seen dragging helpless personnel offscreen to a grisly fate - judging by the huge splash of blood from inside its elevator.
• Shout-Out: To the living, demon-possessed trees that rape Cheryl in the original The Evil Dead (1981).
• When Trees Attack: As the name suggests, it's an animate tree capable of killing and/or molesting its victims.

The Blob

• Blob Monster: It's a carnivorous blob monster that oozes everywhere.
• Shout-Out: It's a man-eating (or rather, man-absorbing) Blob Monster that brings to mind the titular monster of The Blob (1958).

Boomer/The Witch/The Hunter/The Tank

• The Cameo: They are explicitly the monsters from Left 4 Dead, making a brief background appearance as some of the many monsters who slaughter the staff of the Organization during the Purge.

The Buckner Family

• Apocalyptic Log: Patience Buckner's diary, which details how her various family members killed each other (and cut off her arm) in the name of the Great Pain, ending with a Latin inscription that will bring them back as zombies when read out loud.
• Artifact of Doom: The Latin words at the end of Patience's diary will, if read out loud, bring her and her family back as zombies to painfully murder the reader and anyone else who happens to be around.
• Ax-Crazy: Yup, it's a family trait and proud tradition to kill For the Evulz.
• Big, Screwed-Up Family: Apart from the casual emotional abuse and sadomasochism meted out on a daily basis while they were alive, the Buckners eventually went from murdering travelers to mutilating and killing each other. In short order, Pa tortured Ma to death by cutting her belly open and filling it with hot coals; Matthew killed Judah; one of Patience's arms was cut off and fed to the rest of the family; Matthew killed Pa, specifically by mutilating his jaw; finally, he presumably killed Patience.
• Cannibal Clan/Fed to Pigs: Either one or the other is implied by Patience's diary, which mentions how her severed arm was "et", but doesn't specify by whom/what.
• Cold-Blooded Torture: A fine pastime for the whole family, who do it in the name of the pain-centered Religion of Evil they follow. Ma Buckner is implied to have died from having hot coals stuffed into her belly, and Patience lost an arm to her relatives' sadism.
• Cool, but Inefficient: Ma Buckner's saw, which is most effective when the victim's being held down.
  • Matthew Buckner's bear-trap attached to a chain, which sometimes works as a capture-weapon but is prone to getting tangled and doesn't inflict as much damage as might be expected.
• Combat Sadomasochist: All of 'em. Matthew is undoubtedly the worst, however: According to Patience, he is literally aroused by torture and self-mutilation — to the point of getting "a husband's bulge."
• Danger Takes a Backseat: While his children go about trying to break into the Cabin, Pa Buckner stows away in the back of the Rambler and waits until Holden and Dana try to escape in it, at which point he uses the opportunity to murder Holden.
• The Family That Slays Together: A married couple and their three children, who work together to torture everyone they come across to death due to being part of a pain-and-death cult. However, they also slay together each other, showing that such a family wouldn't last very long... unless they can return as putrid corpses through black magic.
• Giant Mook: Matthew, a hulking menace who uses his bare hands and brute strength as readily as any weapon.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain:
  • Judah's cut hand, still looking for victims to kill even when it's missing the rest of him, grabs a soldier that came to finish off Marty, foiling the Organization's first attempt at finishing the ritual.
  • Patience Buckner, also in search of more victims, eventually finds her way down the ritual chamber and kills the Director with a hatchet to the head, before falling to her doom herself. This doesn't really fix anything, since her actions inadvertently save Marty, but essentially doom him and the rest of the world a few minutes later... but since Marty is The Hero and the Director is the Big Bad, it rather feels like a fix.
• Our Zombies Are Different: They are a "Redneck Zombie Torture Family", about as similar to regular zombies as an elephant is to an elephant seal. Mostly they are Revenant Zombies, clearly retaining their intelligence and motivated by the desire to torture and murder rather than some instinct to eat.
• Patricide: Matthew murdered not only his father but also his brother and sister. It's implied he did this purely for sadistic sexual gratification, in contrast to his relatives' twisted religious fanaticism.
• Religion of Evil: They all follow "Great Pain", based around inflicting and suffering pain. Patience's diary mentions her brothers "proving their devotion" on some travelers, which, judging by what the family is like in death, probably involved torturing said travelers to death.
• Undead Child: Patience is a young girl, albeit one nearing adolescence, who came back as a murder-happy zombie together with her parents and older brothers.

Clown

• Artifact of Doom: The Fortune Teller Machine in the back of the cellar would have summoned this Monster Clown.
• Giggling Villain: A murderous clown whose dialogue consists entirely of creepy laughter.
• The Hyena: It may be a dark mockery of a real clown, but it would be a mockery of a Monster Clown as well if it didn't chuckle non-stop as if it was programmed to do so.
• Immune to Bullets: In the film, getting shot three times in the chest doesn't even slow him down. The novel features him easily shrugging off several shots to the face as well.
• Monster Clown: A giggling, homicidal clown with an immunity to bullets and god only knows how many other supernatural powers.
• Shout-Out: To Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The costume/design used is the same one from Xander's nightmare from the first season.

Deadites

• Our Zombies Are Different: Along with regular zombies and "Redneck Zombie Torture Family", the Necronomicon-induced undead.
• Shout-Out: They're demon-possessed corpses lifted straight from the Evil Dead franchise, and some time before the first film was remade at that!

Dismemberment Goblins

• Exactly What It Says on the Tin: Goblins who dismember people.
• Funny Background Event: During the purge, they can be glimpsed on the security monitors, taking one of the facility golf carts for a joyride.
• Good Wings, Evil Wings: One of them sports a villainous set of bat wings, which helps it grab potential victims from the upper waist.
• Half the Man He Used to Be: In the first few seconds of the purge, the Goblins can clearly be seen living up to their namesake by grabbing a guard by his arms and legs and ripping him in two — flinging the upper half at the camera for good measure.
• Pintsized Powerhouse: They're about half the size of a grown man, but they dismember people with their bare hands, so it's safe to say that they are stronger than they look.
• Slasher Smile: Their default expressions are wide-eyed, sinister grins that show off lots of tiny, needlelike teeth.

The Doctors

• Dressed to Heal: Both of them are dressed in blood-streaked hospital scrubs, aprons, surgical caps, and masks. Close examination reveals that these clothes have been crudely stitched onto their bodies.
• Eye Scream: During the containment purge montage, a close-up shot of the smaller one reveals that his eyes have either been sewn or burned shut. Disturbingly enough, this doesn't appear to affect his vision in the slightest, as he can be seen examining a scalpel he's about to use as if he can see it.
• Mad Doctor: It's not established if the Doctors are motivated by scientific curiosity, a misguided desire to help their victims, or pure sadism — it's not even certain if they have any real desires of their own. Whatever the case, regardless of what drives them, it drives them to strap people to operating tables and prepare to get to work on them with bloody, rusty scalpels.
• Morally Ambiguous Doctorate: It's not certain they actually have a real doctorate, as they may well have been created the way they are by the Ancient Ones, but either way, their official designation is "the Doctors", and their intent is less healing and more cutting people up with very clearly non-sterile tools.
• Strapped to an Operating Table: During the brief montage of security camera footage, the Doctors are seen getting ready to vivisect a captured technician in this way.

The Dolls

• Artifact of Doom: Appropriately, the artifact of choice for these murderers wearing doll-faced porcelain masks is another porcelain mask.
• Cold-Blooded Torture: Appear taping, binding, and preparing to burn a guard, seemingly just for the sake of it.
• For the Evulz: What stands out in their behavior is that they don't even stay to watch their victims burn to death or smell the scorched flesh, for them the knowledge that they killed is enough and the matter is over for them once they throw the match and close the door behind them.
• The Family That Slays Together: They at least superficially resemble a family, organized into an adult couple in fine eveningwear and a younger couple in stereotypically teenage clothes (particularly the younger-male's hoodie)... and all four of them are murderers.
• Malevolent Masked Men: A bunch of people wearing creepy doll masks that light people on fire and leave them to die for unknown reasons. Their intro is even Emerging from the Shadows focused on the masks.
• Serial Killers: It's not known if fire is their modus operandi or if they are more open-minded, but given that the whole point of their existence is going after the Organization's sacrifices to kill them, it's surely not their first time casually burning people alive.
• Shout-Out: They're a reference to the three masked killers who terrorise the protagonists of The Strangers.

Dragonbat

• Giant Flyer: It's a dragon-bat hybrid that's as big as a human.
• Hybrid Monster: A huge bat, but with some dragon-like features. According to Ronald the Intern, it has a developed sense of smell. And in the novelization, it breathes fire.

Flock of Killer Birds

• Shout-Out: A reference to the plot of The Birds, where all of birdkind starts attacking humanity with lethal force for mysterious reasons.

Fornicus, Lord of Bondage and Pain

• Artifact of Doom: A puzzle, almost exactly identical to the Lament Configuration (except it's a sphere instead of a cube), which would presumably summon him to inflict torturous, BDSM-flavoured deaths on the Organization's chosen sacrifices when solved.
• Bald of Evil: A demonic killer who looks as if he might have bathed in acid.
• Expy: Of Pinhead from Hellraiser. Like Pinhead, he's a mutilated demon lord dressed in leather who wants to test the limits between pain and pleasure, and has sawblades pushed into his skull rather than pins.
• Hell-Bent for Leather: Given that it's BDSM standard clothing, this powerful demonic entity wears a black, vestlike garment and a single matching glove, both of them made from leather.
• Humanoid Abomination: His love for receiving and giving pain has turned him into both a literal and a figurative abomination with telekinetic powers and the ability to summon chains from nowhere, but he still looks like a normal man, albeit one with razor blades and barbed wire embedded in his flesh.
• The Stoic: Hearing helpless screams doesn't mean much for him, especially if he is not the reason and he can't touch them.
• Torture Technician: He's not outright shown torturing someone, but considering he's the "Lord of Bondage and Pain" and is shown having two workers tied up upside down during the Purge rather than killing them straight away, it can be assumed that the deaths he inflicts are far from quick and painless.

Giant Ant/Ape/Cat/Ferrets/Floating Head/Insects/Millipede/Owl/Snake/Tarantula/Toad/Woman

• Exactly What It Says on the Tin: Just big versions of animals.
• Mix-and-Match Critters: Downplayed. The giant snake has both a cobra's hood and a rattlesnake's rattle.

The Huron

• Flaying Alive: How he kills his victims. In the visual companion, he's shown on top of an Organization worker, preparing to scalp him.
• Magical Native American: Downplayed. He himself has no apparent magical powers, but much like the Organization's other monsters he's summoned by a magical artefact, and he may have some form of eternal youth unless he's a present-day Native American man just wearing the garb.
• Shout-Out: A similarly aggressive Native American spirit appeared in in an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Kevin

• Artifact of Doom: He would apparently have been summoned by the film reel Marty messes around with in the cellar, which is something none of the protagonists would've wanted, considering he's an ambiguously supernatural murderer who can and will "exsanguinate [someone] in a second" according to the novelisation.
• Expy:
  • The director has revealed that he is inspired by We Need to Talk About Kevin, being a normal-looking but dangerously violent young man named Kevin.
  • He (or at the very least the novelization version) may also have been inspired by the eerily agile serial killer of the same from Sin City, both apparently being human-looking murderers with implicitly supernatural abilities.
• Humanoid Abomination: Apparently one of the most human-looking of all the Organization's stable of humanoid entities, but he's somehow capable of bleeding a guard dry in the space of a second.
• Nothing Is Scarier: In the film, we don't know what he does. The novelization says he approaches a guard to "exsanguinate him in a second," but doesn't explain how.
• They Look Just Like Everyone Else!: The novel describes him as "a quiet, normal-looking person with a small smile on his face", right before it describes him somehow draining all the blood from someone in a second.
• Tom the Dark Lord: He's a dangerous killer capable of killing someone in just a second... who happens to be named Kevin.

Kiko ("Japanese Floaty Girl")

• Our Ghosts Are Different: She looks like a stereotypical Stringy-Haired Ghost Girl, though due to her limited screentime we don't know how she became a ghost or what exactly her powers are. Whatever her motivations, she's out to kill the class of school girls she's unleashed on. However, the victims intended for the Japanese ritual somehow manage to fight back and contain her spirit inside a happy frog.
• Stringy-Haired Ghost Girl: With her long, stringy black hair; deathly pale skin; and white shroud; she is an onryō clearly inspired by Sadako from The Ring.

Killer Robot

• A.I. Is a Crapshoot: It's intelligent enough to use grappling hooks to bring victims into buzzsaw range, though given that it's in the possession of the Organization, its AI was most likely designed to kill people in the first place.
• Artifact of Doom: Much like the other creatures the Organization have at their disposal to kill their sacrifices, he is summoned by an item hidden somewhere in the cellar for the sacrifices to mess with, in this case a buzzsaw.
• Mechanical Monster: This man-sized robotic arachnid is the only explicitly artificial creature in the Organization's menagerie of sacrifice killers.
• Scary Scorpions: He's basically a Spider Tank made to resemble a scorpion instead, and he has saws in his limbs for maximum human-slaughtering potential.
• You Will Not Evade Me: He launches grappling hooks at two guards and drags them close to eviscerate them with his fast rotating buzzsaws.

The Kraken

• Combat Tentacles: The only part of it we see is a tentacle capturing a scientist.

Ku Klux Klan

• The Klan: They look like regular Klansmen, but are probably demonic in nature.
• Politically Incorrect Villain: They dress in KKK robes and one of them is wielding a length of rope.
• Terrible Trio: There are three Klansmen — two dressed in white and one in red. The red one is presumably the leader, as is accurate to how the Klan operates.

Merman

• Artifact of Doom: It's summoned, presumably to dig its teeth into its would-be victims like it ends up doing to Hadley, when someone blows the conch shell lying around in the cellar. The novelization, however, suggests that Curt might have summoned it by putting the conch to his ear.
• Graceful in Their Element: In its only scene, the Merman has great difficulty moving on dry land, and is only able to kill Hadley because he's been knocked to the ground by an explosion. However, judging by the presence of a lake near the cabin, it presumably would have fared better there had it been chosen for the ritual.
• Mighty Glacier: It's a huge and bulky creature with incredibly powerful jaws, but because the purge takes place entirely on dry land, it moves as a snail's pace and is only able to claim a victim because the poor guy was knocked down by an explosion.
• Our Mermaids Are Different: Sporting a huge, fanged mouth, long tangled hair, webbed fingers, a fishtail, and a blowhole, the Merman seems only vaguely human at best. It is also carnivorous and resembles a blobfish after the fish has been taken out of its natural habitat.

Mutants

• Alien Blood: When one of them is shot in the head by Marty, it bleeds green gunk instead of blood.
• Artifact of Doom: Apparently, a large chest of bottles and vials containing unknown substances, complete with an antique gas mask. At present, it's not known if the bottles had to be opened or the gas mask had to be worn (or both at once) in order to summon the mutants to kill whoever meddled with them.
• Hazmat Suit: Most of the mutants wear these, minus the signature helmets.
• Was Once a Man: The fact that they're dressed in hazmat suits and hospital gowns suggests that they were once human before being exposed to something that mutated them into their current state.
• Vomit Indiscretion Shot: During the brief overview of the security monitors, the Mutants can be seen holding a captive down while one of them vomits green slime into his face.
• Zombie Puke Attack: Their favoured means of dispatch is to puke green goo on people. According to the novelization, this is a deadly acid that can dissolve their victims into something more edible.

Reavers

• The Cameo: Originated in Firefly, another Joss Whedon work, and appear in a blink-and-you'll-miss-it cameo in the finale. Given the inhumanly deranged behavior of the Reavers, they're in good company.

The Suffocators

• Ambiguously Human: There's nothing overtly supernatural about them in the brief glimpse of them we get on the monitors.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: They suffocate their victims with plastic bags.

The Sugarplum Fairy

• Artifact of Doom: Playing her musical box will summon her to kill the ones who did so — but only if it's allowed to play to the end.
• Butter Face: A non-sexual example. Most of her looks like a cute little pre-teen ballerina, but her face is just a large lamprey's mouth.
• Creepy Child: She appears to be just a little girl in a ballerina outfit, but a Face-Revealing Turn shows that her only facial feature is a large, lamprey-like mouth.
• Cute Creature, Creepy Mouth: What looks like a normal girl from the back has a face that is entirely taken up by a large mouth.
• Lamprey Mouth: One that takes up her entire face.
• Fluffy the Terrible: Does the name "Sugarplum Fairy" bring to mind a Humanoid Abomination?

Unicorn

• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: It's shown impaling a Facility member on its horn during the Purge.
• Shown Their Work: Mythologically speaking, unicorns were only gentle towards virgin maidens. Anyone else was stab bait.

Vampires

• Bald of Evil: The only one of them we see is completely bald, as a reference to Count Orlok from Nosferatu, and much like the Count, he's a bloodthirsty monster who feeds on humans.
• Lean and Mean: The human blood they feed on probably doesn't have too many calories.
• Looks Like Orlok: Production photos show that they even wear the same outfit.
• Shout-Out: The one vampire we actually see on screen shares his baldness, pale skin, pointy ears, long fingers and nails, front-teeth fang positions, and black robe with Count Orlok from Nosferatu.

Werewolf

• Small Role, Big Impact: It's just another one of the released monsters, but it randomly shows up just in time to stop Dana killing Marty and completing the ritual.
• Our Werewolves Are Different: We never see it in its human form, for one thing; for another, we don't know if it's affected by the full moon, or even if it can transform at all. It's also a Wolf Man-type biped.

Witches

• Evil Old Folks: The one witch we see is an ugly old hag who's shown eating a Facility worker's soul.
• Power Floats: The one witnessed in the first elevator massacre floats several feet above the ground in an immediately impressive demonstration of her magical prowess.
• Wicked Witch: At least one of them is an ugly, elderly Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette with long, black fingernails and a black dress and cloak who uses her magic to eat someone's soul.
• Your Soul Is Mine!: As seen in the first few seconds of the Purge, the witches prefer to dispatch their victims by devouring their souls. According to the novel, this allows them to rejuvenate themselves.

Wraiths

• Our Ghosts Are Different: A ghostly skull-shaped fog.

Zombies

• Horror Hunger: Given their mundane clothing, they are most likely the kind of zombie that's compelled to eat humans by a virus infecting them.

The Ancient Ones

The Ancient Ones

In General

• Allegorical Character: They're an obvious metaphor for the audience of horror films. They're entertained by the suffering of the people they watch and consider most of their survival unacceptable.
• Creature of Habit: They demand the same scenario every time to be appeased. If they don't get it, The End of the World as We Know It ensues.
• Devil, but No God: They are the only divine beings shown; there is apparently no good force capable of preventing them from causing The End of the World as We Know It if they choose to do so.
• Greater-Scope Villain: It's their fault that the Organization has to sacrifice young people for the sake of their desires and appeal to prevent the end of the world.
• Monstrous Humanoid: The only thing we see of them is a giant human right arm, much bigger than the titular cabin, with dark skin and veins reminiscent of lava.
• Outside-Context Villain: The Organization, Dana and Marty, and the audience either know about them from the beginning or eventually learn about them before they strike, but to all the others who thwarted their own rituals, they defeated some unspeakable evil, only to be suddenly killed out of nowhere by some unmentioned even bigger unspeakable evil.
• Psychopathic Manchild: The Controllers have to do exactly what they want how they want it, and if they don't, they'll require lots of blood, or else they get it themselves.
• Walking Spoiler: More so than any other character in the film, including the Controllers and even the Director, the very existence of the Ancient Ones is a major twist not so much as hinted at until halfway into the film, but they turn out to be central to both the film's plot and its satire of the horror genre.

---