I Always Knew Unicorns Couldn't Be Trusted

The Cabin In The Woods
(2011)


This...was basically Midnight Meat Train...in a cabin...in the woods.

Five college kids become unwitting human sacrifices...and that's not even a spoiler because the movie makes it perfectly clear what's going on from the beginning. That knowledge doesn't stop the genuine cringes, creeps, and scares, nor does it lessen the sardonic humor of the situation. Some have said the ending was silly but I thought the whole thing was brilliant.

It's just another day at the office for a pair of techs who work for a huge, global organization that specializes in luring "innocents" to their doom, for the sake of all mankind.

These guys.

Each sacrifice must match a stereotypical horror movie character (for this region): The Whore, The Athlete, The Scholar, The Fool, and The Virgin. Everything is going according to plan until it's discovered that one of the sacrifices isn't...well...sacrificed. That's when all hell breaks lose and you get to see some typical movie monsters and some creative ones. My personal faves are...

The Unicorn, 

Knew you couldn't trust those majestic buggers!

The Sugar Plum Fairy, 

Fairies will forever give me the creeps now.

 and of course,

The Werewolf (because you know how I just love them).

You might want to turn around.

A few things I enjoyed:

I love how one (possibly two) of the sacrifices seems to be afraid of the ballerina before he even knows why he should be. I mean who's frightened of a child in a tutu?

After you just read the creepy diary of the pain-worshiping, probably inbred backwoods redneck, why would you read the Latin in the last entry? What (probably inbred) hillbilly redneck knows Latin? I mean she doesn't know what the proper word for an erection is, but she knows Latin? And you're going to read that?

Though arguably sinister and callous, the big corporate machine behind the sacrifices was ingenuous. You can totally imagine teams of scientists from every division concocting new and exciting methods of throwing you under the bus...for the good of all mankind. Say what you want but I loved it. Yeah, the speech about saving the world was a little cheesy, but you know a corporation always have to sell you their schtick or else it might seem like they're just enjoying benefiting from your sorrow. Wait, was this film spoofing horror movies...or reality?

My only minor gripe was the very, very end. I know it's anal, but nothing that size could exist on Earth in multitude. Or in it for that matter.

Or maybe it could. This is why I don't do vacations in the woods.