[b]THeMadHatter wrote:[/b] [quote]What was it about Cabin that you liked so much? It's personally on the bottom of my list of "good movies I've seen this year." Not saying you all should hate it too, i'm just curious as to what its appeal actually was for other people who have seen it. Everyone raved about it, but it just made me feel physically ill. It seemed to be just like every other horror movie to me. The concept was highly unoriginal (as far as the order of deaths, the nudity in the first girl's death, being "setup" by outside forces, zombies, sacrifices, a labyrinth of monsters, etc.) the gore was excessive, they used Switchfoot of all bands during the introduction of mr. weed, and I felt the ending wasn't really an end, just an escape from the movie in general. I don't know, maybe i'm just weird. Maybe it's just my aversion to movies whose plot line is "Kill all the things." :P [/quote] [b]WARNING: SPOILERS[/b]. I'm about to talk about the plot of [b]The Cabin in the Woods[/b] so if you haven't seen it [b]DON'T READ THIS[/b]. I mean this in the most amicable way possible, but I just have to ask: did you watch the movie? I'm genuinely curious as to how you could come out of it thinking that the plot line is "kill all the things" or that it's unoriginal or like every other horror move. I mean, certainly, the setup is a generic horror movie setup (five kids go to a remote cabin ignoring obvious warnings to their doom), but that's the whole point. This movie is a comedy, a satire and deconstruction of the horror genre. It's like Scream for the Evil Dead crowd. Every horror movie cliche is subverted or turned on its head. They make it very obvious that they are playing with the conventions of more cliche horror movies and doing it for laughs, as well as to make some points about the state of the genre and the people who watch it. I mean, half the movie is the guys in the control room manipulating the events so that normally smart people choose to split up when they should stay together or have sex in the woods when they should stay inside. It's making fun of the way those things happen in many horror movies not because they are natural but because it allows the plot to move forward, or to have a kill scene, or show nudity. Regarding the order of the deaths, there are entire conversations about exactly why the deaths occur the way they do. They explain that it doesn't matter if the "virgin" survives or not, as long as she's last and as long as she suffers. The first girl's death and her nudity is one of the most important scenes. We watch the men behind it engineering it so that they will behave amorously and then be caught, and then they watch with barely-concealed pleasure as their scene plays out. Even the ones who initially act disgusted sort of give in and peek. It's an illustration of the voyeuristic nature of film, and as audiences we are implicated in the act of watching. Do we not feel a similar anticipation and curiosity, whether we give voice to it or not? The gore is excessive because it's what we want to see, and, in the words of Quentin Tarantino, because it's so much fun. Think of it this way. The men in the control room are directors. The events in the cabin are their movie. The elder gods, the ancient ones for whom the sacrifice must be made, are the audience. WE are the ones who demand that teenagers be sacrificed by zombies or redneck zombies or sexy witches or angry molesting trees over and over again to our satisfaction. WE have made the formula lucrative and so they duplicate it to please us. In the end of the movie, the gods (us) didn't get what they expected and so they revolted, an examination of what happens when we allow creative, risk-taking movies to fail and keep throwing our support behind recycled Hollywood garbage. Also I'd like to hear your reasoning for why the labyrinth of monsters was unoriginal because i have never in my life seen anything like the climax of this movie. It blew my mind. Plus when the girl mistakenly kills Richard Jenkins character amidst all the carnage, she doesn't realize that she has actually killed the real monster, the one who subjected she and her friends to all of this. The movie works on a lot of levels. It's very cleverly written. Switchfoot is my favorite band and why would I care that their music is in this awesome movie? Just makes it that much more awesome. That's the short version - I could talk for a long time about this movie because it has so much going on and so much to say. How many average, unoriginal horror movies could provoke this much discussion? I may have come across a little defensive so sorry about that, I just really wanted to get across why I think that this is a great movie, and that doesn't mean you have to like it! You may not have enjoyed the film because it IS made out of horror movie parts, they've just been arranged into something very different. But I had to defend it against accusations of banality. [quote]Also, have you seen Men In Black 3? If not, do so. I'm sure it'll end up on your list of good things. Great plot, amazing humor moments ("Mommy, the president stole my milk!"-little girl in reference to Smith) and touching ending. [/quote] I have not. Does it matter if I never saw the second one? [quote]And I do have to ask: though you hated Snow White's acting and concept, how did you like the technical work such as effects and costumes? That's what I was truly interested in, but I fear that I'll just find out that the best affects were all in the trailers.[/quote] Oh the effects and costumes were fine. No real complaints there. Ravenna's creatures made out of those black scales or whatever are pretty cool, and the effect by which they make regular size actors into dwarfs is seamless. I actually don't even hate the acting. Hemsworth is good in spite of his material and Theron is fun in a showy role. But the writing and execution are mostly just horrendous. The characters are mishandled and the story bored me. It's just sound and pictures with nothing behind it.