Hacker Cinema
The Cabin in the Woods
2012 · Film · 95 min
Directed by Drew Goddard
Five friends set out for a weekend at a remote cabin in the woods, expecting nothing more than fun and relaxation. As night falls, they discover that something far more unsettling is at work and that nothing about their getaway is what it seems.
5 positive1 mixed8 neutralfrom 14 commenters
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15 comments on Hacker News
Here is a long ass post with some more but they come with a huge disclaimer — they are VERY personal opinions:
If you care a lot about plot and hate holes, go for critic >70%. 60-69% is passable but only if you like the subject/genre of the movie.
Very personal opinion — I find any movie with critic <50% completely unwatchable. I literally want to walk out of the theater. This includes nearly every modern horror movie because characters in horror movies always do dumb things. I know that’s the appeal but I hate it.
The extremely rare horror movie with >85% critic probably won’t be scary but these are personally the only horrors I enjoy (e.g. The Cabin in the Woods).
Movies with audience scores below 60% are hard watches.
>90% critic movies are really well done as in they did their homework. Left no stone unturned. It doesn’t mean that it’s an objectively good or memorable movie (use IMDB scores for that).
If you like experimental movies and/or are you’re into filmmaking, go for >90% critic and 65-85% audience for gems. If you’re not, you will HATE these movies.
But watch out — sometimes if you come an across a movie with high critic and low audience, it’s a movie really for people in the movie industry. You have to read the synopsis to figure out which case it is. See Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.
Superhero movies and fandom movies (e.g. LOTR) need extra consideration. If they didn’t follow source material, audience scores seem to be even lower than if it was original content. On the other hand, it also goes the other way.
If you’re a deep cut kind of person, check to make sure that the movie has a high enough rating count. Scores for less well-known movies are less accurate.
Old movies, especially those older than the 70s-80s, are harder to judge on RT. There seems to be a self-selection bias of people who are only rating those movies because they remembered liking them. But at the same time, they were also more revolutionary for their time (to be fair to the movie).
All of these tips are for movies. I watch few TV shows and don’t have insight into that side of RT.
I mean, sure. I like Harry Potter and I also liked HPMOR. Although imo it goes off the rails in the second half or so and kinda fails to live up to its promise.
Satire / parody doesn't necessarily have to be a merciless polemic against the target - and as a matter of fact, it would be pretty hard to read HPMOR and not come away with the feeling that the author was a pretty big Harry Potter fan.
Another thing that comes to mind is the horror movie Cabin in the Woods, which sends up lots of horror tropes but is still fun and enjoyable for fans of the genre.
The ideas you’re proposing are the mainstream norms. I’m inclined to think the internet has played a large part in it. The social dialogue is simply much better. Earlier movies were overly simplistic and dumb.
I think Slasher films are the poster child of this. They began as this thing for the geekier men, with their idolization of the pure final girl in the 80s and 90s. But they all kind of portrayed this same dumb world view as lampooned in Cabin in the Woods. It mostly ended with Scream, which featured characters openly reflecting on the nature of such films and how they translated to pop culture and a final girl that fucked, despite still being kind and pure and unpunished. But it still kept this cultural narrative of the dorky guy protagonist.
The newer scream (number 6, which is unironically fantastic imo; best since the og) features a jock named chad who is not an obtuse asshole, horny girls that are not defined by being horny, and weird people with weird passions that are shown as sociable and well liked. This is good.
But this highlights the larger point. Being a jock was not the problem, it was being an asshole. It’s good that we recognize that jocks are not necessarily assholes. But assholes still thrive and environments where physical strength assertions to social power are probably the worst of them.
at the end of the day there is going to be a social hierarchy. If this shifts to favor intellect, academic achievement, and social skills; how do you support the dumber bigger kids who will geeked compelled to physically assert themselves into positions of social power? Very difficult. And it’s not like there aren’t a plethora of dumber, weaker kids who lack that option and also need support.
“Who will weep for the bully” is not easy to answer because being an asshole is often a survival strategy…
> They also sacrificed humans to their gods. The tenure of a bad habit is not an argument in favour of the habit.
But how certain are you that most of the problems that we struggle with today aren't a result of insufficient ritual sacrifice? Maybe we need to heed the lesson taught to us by the movie Cabin in the Woods.
This reminds me of the movie “a cabin in the woods” where the dude with the collapsible stainless steel baseball bat sized bong/coffee mug is rendered immune to the mind control gases by the cannabis he smokes constantly.
Oh no, I was afraid someone would take me up on that! Hahaha.
No particular order. Since 2010ish. Not an exhaustive list of all good horror in that time frame.
- You're Next. It's a trad home-invasion/slasher kinda thing but... then changes genre. I'll leave it at that.
- Cabin in the Woods. Needs no introduction? Solid humor-horror.
- Evil Dead. The soft reboot. Pretty good for the kind of thing it is, which is an Evil Dead-type movie, of course.
- The Babadook. Great horror for people who like to be scared but don't want gore. Extremely efficient use of a tiny cast and very few locations.
- It Follows. A core concept that's creepy as hell, and some damn fine imagery that will stick with you. Lots of moody, slow-paced (but good!) scenes but... it does follow. Unsubtly very much about the harmful aspects of sex and sexual behavior.
- The Witch (or, The VVitch, as it's styled). If you like frontier-type stuff, with period-accurate dialog, plus horror, this will very likely be up your alley. Nb that here "frontier" means "New England, probably just a few miles in from the coast", not, like, the "Old West".
- Bone Tomahawk. Action-horror that is set in the Old West. Not exactly a piece of fine film-making but it pretty much does exactly what it sets out to do, and does it well, which makes it a success in my book.
- The Void. Carpenteresque creature work and Lovecraftian baddies. Excellent example of a throwback horror movie that aims to feel like it was made in another decade.
- The Girl with all the Gifts. Some people liked this a lot more than I did, so I'm including it. I thought it was just OK. Basically a zombie movie, kinda.
- Krampus. I'm not usually into Christmas-horror, which tends to be sub-b-grade garbage and otherwise just isn't to my taste, but watched this because I kept seeing it recommended, and... wow, it's actually good. Careful that you get the right film, there are a bunch with similar titles and I'd guess most of them are terrible. This is the 2015 one directed by Dougherty.
- Get Out. I'd call it just OK (I don't... think I was supposed to find as much if it laugh-out-loud funny in the final act, as I did?) but accept that I'm probably wrong about that, given the overwhelmingly-positive reaction.
- Train to Busan. Maybe my favorite zombie-hoards type of movie I've seen.
- Sorry to Bother You. If you like genre-bending and lots of absurdism in your horror, this one's for you.
- Happy Death Day. Slasher x Ground Hog Day, with that concept explored for just about all it's worth. Relatively light-hearted (it'd almost have to be) but not without tension. Sequel's less good—not awful, but a big step down. Same director made a similar film, "Freaky", that's another mash-up concept, and is quite good.
- It Comes at Night. Uh... if you really like movies that make you kinda wish you'd never watched them, not because of, say, realistic gore, but because they sorta make your soul hurt, this is a very good movie of that kind. But maybe don't, though?
- One Cut of the Dead. Brilliant concept, fun throughout. Not in any sense a traditional zombie movie, and I would 100% recommend it to people who usually don't like zombie movies. Don't spoil it, go in as cold as possible. It's one that is much better if you know almost nothing about it before you start.
- Game Night. Horror-adjacent, at least. Not amazing but another one that I watched after being repeatedly assured by many people that it was much better than it looked like it would be (it looked pretty bad), and it was.
- Hereditary. I hated this one but it's another where my opinion is way, way in the minority. Lots of people love it.
- Colour out of Space. If you can tolerate, or actually enjoy, Nic Cage, and like Lovecraftian horror, this is worth a watch. Good FX work.
- The Last Matinee. By-the-numbers slasher set in a Uruguayan movie theater, in the 90s. Great kills, the right kind of gross, good set-up/pay-off, good at making you care enough about almost everyone that you're sad when they get got. Requires tolerance for subtitles.
- Caveat. Tight little small-cast film (I think it was a during-the-pandemic production, maybe?). Very stupid-sounding premise that ends up making enough sense in the film itself, and a lot more by the time it's over.
- Vicious Fun. I probably like this one more than it deserves, but I do like it. Horror-comedy, heavy on very winking-at-the-camera references to other horror films and the genre itself. It gets a little bit of the bad kind of indie-feeling in some of the shot choices and acting, but the way it keeps delivering even when you think it's winding down or running out of tricks is outstanding. Did not go the direction I thought it would, judging just from a short description of the plot.
- My Heart Can't Beat Unless You Tell It To. Probably the art-housest film on this list, so keep that in mind before deciding to watch it—you're not in for a standard horror experience, though there is tons of tension and definitely some murderin'. Very good, though. Strongly recommend avoiding spoilers as discovering what the movie's about is a big part of the experience.
- The Haunting of Hill House. OK, so it's a self-contained season 1 of an anthology series, not a movie, but it's (like The Babadook) a really good watch for people who like horror but not a bunch of gore or a sky-high body count. Creators seem to both know what themes are and how to use them for horror, which wouldn't be impressive in an ideal world, but is in this one.
Comedies - Spontaneous, Popstar, Everybody Wants Some
Deconstruction/Meta/Anti-trope -Jump Street movies (count for both this and comedy as do some of the others), The Lego Movie, Cabin in the Woods, Better Watch Out, I'm Thinking of Ending Things
'Film' instead of movie - Another Round, Thorougbreads, The Lighthouse, Ex Machina
If by "they" you mean big-studio Hollywood, then there've been about 1500 of those movies in the last 15 years. There are another 600-700 or so non-major-studio films that see a wide release per year, which I think includes foreign films with US distribution, but also US productions outside the major studios.
Yes, at least a few of those 1500 major Hollywood studio movies are quite good.
Looking at the last few years of MGM's output, Creed and The Cabin in the Woods were both good. I didn't like Skyfall but mine seems to be a minority opinion, and AFAIK it's considered one of the best Bond movies by many people (for whatever that's worth). Stretching back closer to the 15-year mark... The Mist is pretty good. Casino Royale sneaks in right at the 15 year mark, and it's really well-regarded.
Odd coincidence that I literally just finished reading The Atrocity Archives about ten minutes ago. Great book, loved it. Thought the series might have been the inspiration for the movie Cabin in the Woods, but seems not.
People have recommended The Cabin in the Woods, and it's a great movie, but I suggest you hold off watching it until you've seen a lot of other horror movies. It relies on you being familiar with the cliches and genre conventions for it to work.
The description of the genre reminded me of Cabin in the Woods. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1259521/
Is it the beginning of a geek take on horror? It was a fun film, and felt very original when it came out, but it was also a bit of a gimmick. I'm not sure it's ready to become an entire genre without becoming very quickly stereotyped.
My favourites, not in order:
Cabin in the Woods
Looper
The Hobbit
House at the End of the Street
Can't remember much else really. Also seen Twilight but I'd only really recommend that as a date movie.
The Cabin in the Woods. 2012 horror movie written by Joss Whedon.
The film is "The Cabin in the Woods."
* Spoiler *
So - I had no issues with most of the criticisms in the article, and, I could put down the odd behavior by the scientists and the scary snake alien, as more human failing than anything else. Indeed, most of the scientists contacts said they'd do pretty much what the scientists in the movie did - maybe a bit more cautiously, but what kind of movie would that make.
The one issue that _did_ drive me crazy, to the point of distracting me from the entire movie - was the suggestion that Human DNA descended from some random alien who jumped into a waterfall. Forget about "Ignoring Darwinism for 200 years" (as they tried to address this gaping lot hole in the movie) - How do you account for an almost flawless Genetic Tree that shows the relationship between Humans and basically all other animals on the planet?
The worst part, is they could have handled it with a bit of care (I.E. In the way that the "slab" in 2001 provided the spark of intellect for the apes, jumpstarting humanity) - they could have shown Apes (or some other hominid) interacting with the DNA and being altered.
Anyways - I still think it's probably the best SciFi movie of the year, so far. (Not that there was a lot of Competition - MIB? Avengers? Cabin in the woods? I have hopes for "Safety not guaranteed")