The Cabin in the Woods

When a group of teenagers decides to spend a weekend in a cabin in the woods, the audience can already taste that some weird shit is going to happen: grab your popcorn, take a seat and brace yourself. Awe a soda might be useful too.

There’s an athlete, a good girl, a bad girl, a junkie joker and an actually smart guy: an interesting party whose fate has been sentenced by a creepy old hillbilly at the last gas station before reaching the destination. 

Chris Hemsworth, Kristen Connelly and… Sigourney Weaver: not your everyday’s cast for a horror movie.

Group of teenagers: checked. Cabin in the woods: checked. Weird basement: checked. People watching them as if they were on Big Brother and betting on who’s gonna die first: checked. 

Wait what?!

Yes, because from the beginning of this story there are glimpses of this other facade where scientists keep under surveillance these kids every minute of their life making us think they are being unawarely dragged to this isolated place.

Let’s have a look at the cover: a cabin shaped as a Rubik’s cube, changing and adapting perhaps, but adapting to what? To the people of course and to their choices because through choices we pave the path to our future… or our nightmare.

There is the middle age class working behind the scenes to “keep the show alive” and putting, or pushing, the kids to make choices enhancing their senses and shaping the world around them with the sole goal of making them choose what is going to be next. Some hardcore parenting here.

I got hooked, ladies and gentlemen, I wanted to know. My mind was overheating with all those cliches, but also I couldn’t keep myself from wanting more. Each scene in that “backstage” where people were talking about zombies, demons, merman and death like it was a normal day at work in, truth to be told, a very friendly and positive work environment. WOW: seems like a dream job and now I’m even wondering which benefits you might get with it.

You get the constant feeling that this seems something like puppeteers orchestrating a show and you really want to know why, but for that I leave you the pleasure to find out yourselves.

Until now I don’t understand how a movie so brilliant in its genre didn’t get any “follow up” (kinda). There is so much interesting stuff that would deserve a spin off or even a tv show and it would be way more deserved than many other useless productions. 

One day maybe.

And, just between us, what’s your worst nightmare?

Mr. Yellow

PS: mine would probably be going back to school.

No one gets out alive

A house, a girl, an evil presence: horror movie 101.

(It would be nice sometimes to have a decent plot)

The movie is about Ambar, an illegal immigrant who moves to Cleveland after the death of her mother. Here she ends up finding the only affordable place being a room in a big old house in the suburbs. So the girl finds the house (or vice versa?) and the house shows the girl that all the charges are already included: ghostly presences, creepy whispering, old man banging his head against the wall, failing lights: the whole package.

I am personally very confused by many Netflix productions because somehow I always feel like there is something missing, and that something is always related to the plot.

This movie overall it’s actually ok, even better than most of the garbage we can find around and this is why I’m a little bothered. Yes, for sure it is nothing original or revolutionary but does its job avoiding most of the cliches that I am personally sick of such as teenagers/kids bullism, group of friends getting lost and deciding that splitting the group is the best idea, the “nobody believes I see things” until it’s too late and sex scenes.

“No one gets out alive” manages to create the right amount of suspense, even without scaring much, and it doesn’t lose track of Ambar succeeding to keep us focused on her background story with the natural curiosity of finding out what is going on in that haunted house.

Unfortunately we will never know unless we read the novel (thank you Wikipedia for clarifying all my doubts). Without going into many details I reached the end with the frustration about not knowing what was all that about. Thinking from the beginning that the house was haunted and be disproved towards the end it’s something rare and very satisfying, but it’s not enough if not supported by an explanation and because of that leaves unfortunately the viewer with too many WTF.

In the end it’s not bad, but it could have been a little better.

Mr. Yellow

P.S.
Do you think that putting the stone box upside down would have solved the problem?
What’s with the paint/powder on doors and walls?
Ghost fights in a movie not ghost related?
How a 50/55kg girl with a broken ankle can take an 85/90kg man from the 2nd (or 3rd) floor to the basement?
What’s with the butterflies?