Dana, Jules, Curt, Holden and Marty drive to a cabin in the woods for a weekend. In the cellar they find a diary, a music box, a puzzle sphere and a conch shell. Dana reads the diary aloud. Meanwhile, in a control room somewhere underneath, two technicians played by Richard Jenkins and Bradley Whitford are taking bets on which item the kids will pick. The Cabin in the Woods was written in three days by Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard, sat on a shelf for two years, and turned out to be the last word on the genre.
What Happens Underground
The zombie redneck torture family rises from the ground, because Dana chose the diary. The control room pumps pheromones, raises walls, changes the weather. The students die in the order the genre requires. Then Marty, the stoner who has been immune to the chemicals, finds the lift. The last twenty minutes are every monster in the building let out at once, Sigourney Weaver explaining why, and a decision about whether humanity is worth it.
Why It Became The Reference Point
The system purge, with the merman, the unicorn, the ballerina with teeth, is the sequence every horror fan can list. Chris Hemsworth made it before Thor and it was released after. Fran Kranz’s Marty with the coffee-mug bong is the hero. It is 95 minutes, and the argument it makes about why horror films exist has not been answered.
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