Cabin In The Woods

"The audience" is a very broad thing. Everyone in the audience wants something different. This is why so many films follow a formula: the formula has been proven to work and be successful. So yes, in regards to Hollywood, there is a pretty big gap.

I'd say that it's a pretty accurate representation. A bunch of powerful but dormant creatures that are impossible to properly understand by any one person. Public audience.

Yeah, but most of US aren't assholes who get our kicks off of seeing innocent people getting ripped in half. Do we like it when bad guys get hurt? Yes. It's karma, bad things happen to bad people. Do we occasionally enjoy "asshole deaths"? Like guys who are dumb jocks that are always picking on others in every shot we see them, who soon die the moment they have sex? Yes, of course, because they're absolute jerks. It's not the same thing when we see poor schmucks who didn't DO anything wrong getting hurt. In films like that, there's no real "protagonist", there are no good guys, there are just victims and the inflictors of pain you KNOW will get away because of sequelitis. That, to me, is bullshit.

um, I'm not a horror movie fan, and I find the whole "asshole death" not very satisfying and a really bad way to try and enforce "morals" into what should be unjustified no matter what the case. So yeah, in my perspective, the idea of the audience being murder happy gods is a bit justified.

People don't just like seeing Jerkass characters die; they like seeing shallow characters die. If the character's personality is threadbare or cliche enough, people won't develop much if any emotional attachment to them, and so enjoy their deaths on a "There's a fishing hook sticking out of that dude's neck! Gross!/Cool!" level.

edited 23rd Jul '12 8:46:30 AM by RavenWilder

The success of the Slasher and Torture porn genres say hi.

....So, what you're saying is that you agree with this film's message then?

No, because it's saying that we, the audience, have control over all this and more influence than we really do, and that we ALL love seeing poor, helpless teens getting killed and forced into stereotypical roles. Ah, no, Joss. We don't. You've forgotten your own lesson: the inversion of the stereotype. It's why you made "Buffy", to reverse the "dumb blonde who's gonna die" stereotype and make fun of it whilst showing that type of girly character could still kick ass and be a strong person. I find this film making rather insulting broad, sweeping generalizations of ALL horror movie audiences which just aren't true. I don't WANT to see people dying pointlessly in my movies, Joss, okay? It's fucking sick.

Then the movie wasn't aimed at you. Those types of films became popular for a reason, and the people who made them popular are the ones Joss is satirizing here.

What if he went to see it because he's a horror fan or Whedon fan, who doesn't appreciate being lumped together with the freaks?

Yeah, I DON'T. I've been a Joss fan for quite a while despite me having issues with him seemingly hating all organized religion and how, evidently, a happy ending killed his family because he seems to hate using them. I'm a big fan of his work all the same...I dislike being, as aforementioned, "lumped together with the freaks".

What makes you think he's lumping you together with them? The Ancient Ones are meant to represent audiences who go to, enjoy, and encourage studios to make extremely cliche, formulaic, an uninspired horror movies. If that label doesn't apply to you, then why would you assume that you are the target of the satire?

I'm going to try to say this is the nicest way, even though I'm not sure there is a nice way to say this: do you have a persecution complex? Because a lot of your arguments seem to consist of you taking personal offense to everything.

No one is lumping you together with anyone. As was pointed out before, formulas, like the one lampooned in this movie, exist because they work. Movies are a business, and studios don't want to take unnecessary risks. The formulas for movies are used because audiences, time and again, have proven that they will watch it. And I hate to break it to you, but most of the audience are not horror fans. No sane major movie studio is going to try to appeal to what they consider a niche demographic, which is exactly how they see horror fans. They are going to cater to the mainstream, and the mainstream is used to a formula, and buys that formula.

And really, despite my using the term, and a lot of people discussing it, the scenario presented in the film isn't actually a "torture porn." It's a very standard horror plot, using very standard horror stock characters. The whole "a bunch of unlikable teens are killed while the virgin survives" thing has existed since at least the seventies. So many horror films since Halloween have used this formula. Hell, the concept of the Final Girl has been the subject of academic study. It's a formula that Hollywood has used for a while, and it's a formula that they will keep using because, as mentioned before, it works. They would not still be using it if it didn't make them money.

So stop acting like this film is personally trying to insult you, because it is not. This film is about the relationship between movie producers and mainstream audiences, because at the end of the day, Hollywood doesn't give a shit about horror fans, because they aren't a big enough force for them to break even. They need to appeal to mainstream audiences to survive, and mainstream audiences have certain expectations.

If anything, I'd expect horror fans to actually be celebrating this movie, because it satirizes that formula and shows how seriously fucked up and routine it is. It is not, nor was it ever intended to be, an attack on horror fans.

I agree. I am not what one would consider a "horror fan". I didn't care for most slasher movies, and I loathe "torture porn". What I really liked about this movie was how it took the standard horror movie elements, pulled them apart and then put them back together in a way that makes more sense than the conventional "trapped in a cabin" genre. It also takes what is a formulaic plot and breathes new life into it. I like that sort of thing.

Yeah. I have a friend, huge horror fan, loves the torture porn (well, just likes gore in general, really). Really thought this movie was amazing and loved all the references to other horror movies.

Well....what would happen if the movies of the "Torture Porn" were cheap? Suppose that the movie "Clerks" (i know its not a horror movie, just go along with it) a movie that was cheaply made, were in fact quite boring and horrible.

Now, it is quite inevitable that at least a "first" wave of people is going to see it, so it is not like that they KNOW that the movie sucks at this point and cant warm others to not to. In the end, even if the movie was horrible, it made its money back thanks to the first wave of idiots that went to see it; So, in the eyes of the producers, this movie "appeals" to the people, because otherwise it wont have made its money back. And don't tell me that movie producers aren't THAT stupid, even when its clear that they only count the movie as a success from the first week opening revenue AND they don't count the money made after that or made by foreign releases. Maybe these links will help: (warning, contains Movie Bob presence)

www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/the-big-picture/5314-Oscars-The-Grouse http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/the-big-picture/5341-Broken-Biz

So it could be that people just watched those for the sake of watching this "new genre". It isnt of course, but people is quite indeed stupid in remembering things that JUST happened, sort of like how people forget that rushing videogames before they are done ISNT a good idea (Pac-Man and E.T for the Atari 2600 and The Videogame Crash Of 1983, anyone?) and maybe watch the sequels just under the delusion that, since they made money, they could at LEAST improve it, right?.....they listen to the audience, right??............right?

Also. i believe that "ngrey 651" only feels upset that the movie, even if it IS aimed at horror fans of the "Torture" kind, one could swap the archetypes of OTHER movies and no one will notice. The message is so broad that you could apply it to a more broad audience basically and if an element of a movie could be removed and replaced and nobody raises and eyebrow on it, then that element wasn't THAT important for your message.

I understand he being upset that a "twist" like: "The audience is an entitled baby that just happens to have godlike powers and we, the HUMBLE and virtuous filmmakers, have to obey every order. Is not my fault that this ended this way, honest!" wasnt properly done. It COULD have been great, to the point of being memorable enough for anyone in the mainstream to recognize how fucked up is this relationship is between filmmakers and the audience but instead we got this.

I could understand a complaint like that, but ngrey has been arguing that the film lumps him in with "the freaks" and that it accuses him of being a depraved maniac, which is what I was addressing.

To be honest, I think that the ending could have been improved if, rather than the Ancient Ones destroying the world, they decided they liked the new twist to the story and spared the world for one more year. In fact, I actually thought that was the ending the film was leading up to.

edited 24th Jul '12 1:57:01 PM by LizardBite

Really? care to share the exact moments on the movie where this idea of yours came up in your mind before the reveal?

Not really sure. I think it was about the time when they discovered the facility beneath the cabin. I just got this feeling that the Ancient Ones would decide that the victims fighting back like this was even more entertaining, so I was kind of disappointed when the movie ended with them destroying the world anyway. (they'd already established from the office scenes that there were certain rituals that needed to be carried in a certain way to appease some old gods, even if they didn't spell out the specifics of it until the end)

So basically, I liked everything about the movie except for the last thirty seconds or so.

edited 24th Jul '12 1:58:08 PM by LizardBite

That is another thing the movie exaggerates, the fact that they do THE SAME thing over and over. Yes, the rituals are different and varies per country but each one of them does the same "movie" over and over since who knows how many centuries.

You would think that they at least give an explanation on why they only accept a few changes on these "movies", like for example, their notion/perception of time works different to us and they actually see the movies one after another (in their time, sort of like a bad movie night) when for us, its every hundred years each sacrifice (just an example). The inverse could be appropiate, for us is every 10 years but for them is 1000 years, so they want to see something reasembling to what they saw before out of nostalgia, and for that it HAS to be the same as the last one. Because otherwise, these creatures are more likely be just like Azathoth, The Almighy Moron from H.P Lovecraft. Instead of being put to sleep by a bunch of creatures that sing for him so he can stay dormant, they put him in a bad movie night until he collapses and doesn't do anything of substance.

But my point is that, is kinda going too far by saying "you are watching the same thing over and over and you are too ignorant to notice" I mean, yes, most of those torture movies are all equally stupid in plot and execution but ALL THE SAME? Unless he was also taking a dump on the "Monomyth" and "The Hero's Journey", you know that one right? where it is explained on book of Joseph Cambell that people have the subconscious need of always experience the same story over and over but in a different way.

edited 25th Jul '12 1:59:11 AM by Diabolo

I dunno, I actually quite liked the ending. More than anything else, it made me laugh. By this point, things had reached critical mass and the story had reached a logical (if extreme) conclusion: if we're in a setting where anyone can die, why not everyone?

And let's be honest, how often do you get to see that?

I really liked this movie, especially the end. I'll look forward to seeing Drew Goddard's work in the future.

ngrey 651, still alive? Tell me, how would YOU make the twist to only affect those who like torture porn and NOT all the horror fans in general? what line, scene, etc will you change so it makes absolutely clear that message?

Just watched this a couple of nights ago, and loved it, for pretty much the exact reasons that Lawyerdude mentioned at #238.

And for the record, I also am not a horror fan. It doesn't make me sick, nor am I squeamish, I just find them to be somewhat pointless (though the occasional one can be rewarding when they actually have characters worth watching, and we'll leave this particular commentary about the movie and the industry for another day).

I just saw it. Didn't really care for it. It stands up better on analysis, but I think it relies too much on being self aware to actually stand on its own as a good movie.

Hey, startied watching it, nice aversion of Twenty Minutes with Jerks, I love these characters, and—did that eagle just get disintegrated by a mountain-sized Beehive Barrier Invisible Wall? What the fuck?

Wait a minute, this seems familiar... Isn't this exactly the cabin from The Evil Dead?

edited 11th Aug '14 10:52:03 AM by TheHandle