The Cabin in the Woods is a 2012 horror comedy by Drew Goddard about five college friends who become sacrifices in a secret ritual.
At a Glance
| Field | Details |
|---|---|
| Release | December 2011 (Butt-Numb-A-Thon surprise screening); April 13, 2012 (United States) |
| Director | Drew Goddard |
| Writers | Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard |
| Stars | Kristen Connolly, Chris Hemsworth, Anna Hutchison, Fran Kranz, Jesse Williams, Richard Jenkins, Bradley Whitford |
| Runtime | 95 minutes |
| Rating | R |
| Budget | $30 million |
| Box office | About $66.5 million to $69.9 million (sources differ) |
Overview
Five college students, Dana, Jules, Curt, Holden and Marty, drive into the hills for a weekend at a remote cabin belonging to Curt’s cousin. It looks like the opening of a hundred horror movies, from The Evil Deadhttps://thinkhorror.com/the-evil-dead/ onward, and that is the point. From the very first scene, the audience knows something the students do not: in an underground control room, two engineers, Sitterson and Hadley, are watching the cabin on monitors, steering events with hidden controls and mind-altering chemicals.
The cellar of the cabin is full of strange objects, and whichever one the students choose decides which monster comes for them. Dana reads aloud from the diary of Patience Buckner, a girl abused by her sadistic family, and wakes the Buckners as a family of zombies. In the control room, the staff keep a nervous eye on rival operations around the world, including one in Japan with a perfect record, while treating the whole thing like an ordinary day at the office. The film plays as a straight slasher, a sharp workplace comedy and a critique of the genre all at once, and its final act turns into one of the wildest monster free-for-alls in modern horror.
Production
Goddard and Whedon, who had worked together on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, wrote the screenplay in three days. Whedon called it a “loving hate letter” to horror, aimed at slasher clichés and the spread of torture porn. It was Goddard’s directorial debut. Filming took place in Vancouver from March to May 2009. AFX Studio built the creatures, and David LeRoy Anderson estimated that close to a thousand people were turned into around 60 types of monster.
The film was finished in 2009 and was first delayed for a planned 3D conversion. When MGM ran into financial difficulties, the release was shelved indefinitely. Lionsgate acquired it in 2011 and released it in April 2012, nearly three years after filming.
Cast
- Kristen Connolly as Dana Polk
- Chris Hemsworth as Curt Vaughan
- Anna Hutchison as Jules Louden
- Fran Kranz as Marty Mikalski
- Jesse Williams as Holden McCrea
- Richard Jenkins as Gary Sitterson
- Bradley Whitford as Steve Hadley
- Brian White as Daniel Truman
- Amy Acker as Wendy Lin
- Sigourney Weaver as The Director
Reception
The Cabin in the Woods opened with $14.7 million in North America and grossed $42.1 million there, with about $66.5 million worldwide by Box Office Mojo’s reported total. Rotten Tomatoes currently shows a 92 percent score, with a consensus calling it “an astonishing meta-feat, capable of being funny, strange, and scary—frequently all at the same time.” Metacritic’s score is 72 out of 100 from 40 critics. Goddard and Whedon won the Bram Stoker Award and the British Fantasy Award for Best Screenplay, and it won four Fangoria Chainsaw Awards, including Best Supporting Actor for Fran Kranz. It was also nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation. For more meta horror, see Scream. Few horror films of its decade are quoted more.
Spoiler: The Ending
Jules, Curt and Holden are killed, and Dana realizes their weekend is staged. Marty, believed dead, rescues her, and they ride a hidden elevator into the facility, finding hundreds of caged monsters. Cornered by guards, they release them all, and the creatures slaughter the staff. In an ancient temple, the Director explains the truth: each year, sacrifices are made around the world to appease the Ancient Ones, cruel gods under the earth. The American ritual needs five archetypes, with the whore dying first and the virgin dying last or surviving. The Director urges Dana to kill Marty and finish the ritual. Instead, Dana is attacked by a werewolf, Patience Buckner kills the Director, and Dana and Marty decide humanity is not worth saving. They share a joint as a giant hand bursts from the ground, ending the world.
Trivia and Facts
- Goddard and Whedon wrote the script in three days.
- It was Drew Goddard’s first film as a director.
- The finished film sat on the shelf for about three years because of MGM’s financial troubles.
- AFX Studio created around 60 different monster types for the film.
- Wide shots of the facility used the aerospace building at the British Columbia Institute of Technology.
- The five victims match horror archetypes: the whore, the athlete, the scholar, the fool and the virgin.