Genre: Slasher-Scary movie
Synopsis: 5 friends head to a cabin in the woods. A group of zombies starts stalking them. That turns out to be the least of their worries.
About: This is one of those “top secret” projects Hollywood’s trying to keep under wraps. Because the story is apparently “that good” that it needs to be kept secret.
Writers: Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard
(note: “Layover” is being pushed back to tomorrow)
You have to give me a fucking break. Did I actually just read what I think I just read? If so, there’s a very simple reason why this project is “top secret.” It’s because if anyone laid their eyes on this piece of crap, they’d throw it into the fires of Hell before allowing it to get made. Let me give you a sneak peek, a glimpse, of what you’re in for. In this script there are monsters, zombies, robots, vampires, aliens, and giant Gods. All in one story! For your reading pleasure! Yes, someone thought this was a good idea.
The only reason I kept reading was because of this script’s “top secret” status. I kept waiting for some super-cool thing to happen that I’ve never seen before. Well I got that. And man do I wish I could trade it back for the time I lost waiting for it.
Okay look, this is a slasher/monster flick. Carson usually no like these flicks. So I freely admit I have no idea how this will play to the crowd that does. They very well may love it. But I’m betting a lot of people are going to be stumbling out of the theaters after seeing this going, “….what the HELL???”
For me? I like a good scary film. And I like films that take chances: The Ring, The Sixth Sense, The Others, The Orphanage. Scary movies that make you think a little bit. Cabin In The Woods would like to *think* that it’s making you think, but all they’re doing is trying to create the next Scream. A movie that makes fun of the genre, albeit updated to satisfy the information-overloaded text/IM/Facebook generation that’s sprung up heavily since the death of that franchise. It thinks it’s being clever. But it bites off way more than it can chew.
So I guess at this point you’re wondering what this script is about. Well, it’s about 5 college friends who go to a cabin in the woods. All the cliches are played up – on purpose mind you – (right down to the redneck gas station attendant who warns them not to keep going). But something happens as they cross through the mountain tunnel into the old abandoned field. We watch a bird flying carelessly in that direction, only to BAM! Hit an invisible forcefield and die. If this is the kind of thing that gets you excited, I have no problems with that. For me, it raised a big red flag. The “uh oh, this has the potential to be really stupid” flag. And that flag did not let me down.
The five start hanging out, drinking, playing truth or dare. They find the entrance to the basement. Go down, start looking around. A lot of old cluttery junk. The lead girl finds a diary written at the turn of the century. She starts reading it out loud, and accidentally summons a family of ZOMBIES.
We then cut to a CONTROL ROOM (which we’ve actually seen before this) where a bunch of men in lab coats exchange money. See, they’ve been betting on which group of “monsters” the 5 kids would summon. This clues us in, of course, that we’re in some sort of controlled environment. That this place was built. And that secret cameras are recording all of this as some sort of “reality show” for a mysterious audience.
We cut back and forth between the killing and the control room until it’s finally down to just the girl and “the funny guy.” The control room people are concerned because apparently their secret audience will be very angry if the guy is killed before the girl. Lead Girl and Funny Guy find their way down into the secret underground storage area where all these monsters and aliens and robots are kept. They get to the control room, where a final standoff occurs. The control room guys beg the guy to kill himself because…and this is where I honestly said “fuck you” to my computer…the secret audience is a group of gods that have lived here on earth billions of years ago and who are now living underneath it. We have to make sacrifices to them in order to keep them from coming back and destroying our planet. Because these Gods get bored, we have to come up with new unique ways to sacrifice people (give me a fucking break), which is why they’ve created this whole ritual.
They have 8 minutes (before the sun rises) to sacrifice themselves or else the Gods will come back and take over – I am not making this up – the planet. This is actually IN the script – Girl and Funny guy tell them to fuck off. 8 minutes later, the ground rumbles, tears, and we pull back out of this field to see a hand bigger than the house rise out of the ground. The End.
About the only good thing I can come up with for Cabin is the dialogue, which is particularly funny and surprisingly realistic. “Funny Guy” especially has some laugh out loud moments. Alas…it is lost in this disaster of a screenplay. Oh well.
[x] trash
[ ] barely readable
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned from Cabin In The Woods: I’m honestly 50% sure this script is a joke.
