The Cabin in the Woods (2012) - Reviewed

On first sight, you may think this is another cliched horror movie about college students who go to a cabin in the woods and bad things start to happen. If you've seen the trailer, you will probably assume that it's a bit smarter than that - the bad things are actually being controlled by mean scientists behind a screen. But you will never expect what you're about to see in The Cabin in the Woods.

Five college students take a vacation to an isolated shack, the ideal location for horror events. The characters are you're normal stereotypes: the athlete, the stoner, the good girl, the naughty girl, and the brains. Great, you know what's gonna happen - the athlete and the good girl will survive, then he will sacrifice himself to save her, and she might or might not end up dying. End of story, you don't need to watch this movie. Well... No. The movie actually starts in the facility as we listen to the scientists' conversations. You won't quite get it at first, but it soon enough focuses on our main characters and you'll temporarily forget the odd beginning. The story progresses as you'd expect. Night comes and they slowly discover that the cabin is a little spooky. Bad things/monsters/people (I won't tell you which one) appear and attack. Once again, you think you have this movie figured out. But just continue watching and realize how wrong you were.

I am not a big fan of horror movies; in fact, I rarely watch them. But I decided to give this one a try, and I didn't regret it at all. Now, when I usually review a movie, I talk about its essential qualities - plot, characters, originality, direction, acting, and so on - and out of these, I usually emphasize the what the movie was going for. For example, I gave Big Hero 6 a low score because an animated film should be original and I thought it wasn't. On the other hand, Mad Max: Fury Road got a pretty high score because, while it's plot wasn't amazing, its focus was the action and it did a fantastic job. 

For The Cabin in the Woods, I could talk about these qualities, but they are not the point. The point of this movie is that it's a metaphor - it deconstructs the horror genre accurately and it's a perfect balance between satirical and scary scenes. And to be honest, I hadn't fully understood the meaning behind this movie when I was watching it. At some parts I thought, 'Aha! I see what they are doing'. But at others, I was utterly confused (with my confusion reaching its peak at the ending). Then later, when I researched and read about it in more detail, I began to appreciate the deeper aspects of the movie. I could try to explain these myself, but it just would be a lesser version of the explanations already existent online. Here are two links you should follow (view after watching):

1. http://thenickelscreen.com/2012/04/18/the-cabin-in-the-woods-explained-its-a-giant-metaphor/
2. http://www.avclub.com/article/almost-every-horror-reference-cabin-woods-explaine-211254

However, since this is my review, I will briefly talk about the difference qualities of The Cabin in the Woods. The plot is essentially divided into three parts. Each part will be an unexpected curve for the audience; they each contain different but appropriate tones that fit the director's intentions. The characters are, as mentioned above, stereotypical. If this was any other movie, I would have railed against them vigorously. But since the point is to satirize every other movie that uses these characters (and there are countless examples), these characters are excellent choices. Direction and action are both good. Originality? No need to talk about it.

If you are easily scared, don't worry - it's not very scary, just grow some balls and watch it. If you think most horror movies are unoriginal and stale, you'll probably find this one fresh and amusing. Then, visit the links above to find out what you missed while watching. I think you'll be surprised.

8.5/10 - It was an 7.5 the moment I finished watching it, a 8.0 once I did some research, and a 8.5 once I figured out the ending.

Thoughts on the ending [Spoilers Ahead]

So you didn't like the ending. Here's what I think: The links above explain that the ancients represent us, the audience. In the movie, the ancients are appeased when the sacrifices are properly made, but when they aren't the ancients rise. Correspondingly, when watching a horror movie, the general audience expects a certain plot and horror devices (it is almost formulaic). When it breaks from the trend, the audience is disappointed/infuriated and gives it negative reviews. Thus (and this is the brilliant part), when someone watches this movie and leaves the theater angry about the weird ending that they didn't expect or understand, that's exactly the phenomenon that the movie is satirizing. They "rose" from their calm state and "destroyed" (criticized/hated) The Cabin in the Woods.

Jurassic World (2015) - Reviewed

Jurassic World is the sequel to the Jurassic Park series - which, please forgive me, I have not seen. But maybe this is a good thing, since the review will solely be based on the movie itself, without any comparisons to the original. Also, there are SPOILERS in the review because it would be very difficult to talk about this movie without any - you have been warned. On the other hand, I don't really consider these spoilers, because: 

     1) You should be expecting these obvious events to happen, assuming you are paying attention during the movie, or, 

      2) These scenes aren't really important to the story at all, so knowing these facts before your first viewing won't hurt much.

A very short introduction: Two brothers go to visit an awesome island with dinosaurs, where they are engineering a hybrid dinosaur/monster that somehow ends up going out-of-control (didn't see that coming!).

If you've read my other reviews, you would have noticed that I usually flesh out the intro into a paragraph; however, for Jurassic World, there is no need to because that's pretty much it. Read the intro again and try to imagine what would happen in the movie. Do you see the two kids in danger because of some mischief, a badass buff guy coming to save them with a pretty woman who will end up his girlfriend by the end, and the countless cliche scenes where the main characters are too lucky to die while others around them are more unfortunate? If so, you are right! Jurassic World tells you what the ending will be like and fills the middle in with action scenes, and you know exactly who will stay alive and who will die. Granted, the trailer did tell us what to expect - I shouldn't wish for a more complex, developed storyline. But just because it tells us in advanced that it will be predictable doesn't mean it's excusable.

There is almost nothing unexpected in the plot - oh wait, there is. There are these incoherent, meaningless side-stories that get developed throughout, which leave you wondering 'why did they insert these scenes that deter from the focus of the movie - a giant dinosaur on loose'. Here's an example. Amidst of all the chaos that's happening, there's a crazy idiot who persists on putting dinosaurs into military use. So he decides to take control over the island's system, brings in military units, and decides to free(?) the raptors to attack the loose monster. This plan barely worked at all because the raptor trainer (Chris Pratt) reluctantly decided to work with him, but the crazy guy says he would have carried it out even without Pratt. How? There's no other way it would have worked - dinosaurs don't just work for people. Was the point of this back story to bring in the raptors to attack the monster so that at the end, they eventually defeat it? They could have done that fine without the useless, drawn-out backstory. The other example is the scene about the children's parents getting divorced. The two talk about it for five minutes, the younger brother starts crying, the older one comforts him (with very bad acting), and its over. No more divorce talk/insinuation again. So at the end, when the parents are reunited with the children, are they trying to say the family is knit together again due to the hardship? If it was, it was very, very poorly portrayed.

Onward with the characters. The main characters are the Owen (the trainer), Claire (the overseer of the island) and possibly the two kids. About the acting, Chris Pratt played an excellent trainer, Bryce Dallas Howard was also good, but the rest (the kids and most of the other minor characters) were not too astonishing. It is possible that their bad acting is amplified by the poorly written characters. Dynamic characters change in a movie (yes, that is the definition of a dynamic character). But they are supposed to change throughout a movie, not at a single moment in the movie (well, at least not in this one). Claire is the main example, turning from a bureaucratic, apathetic woman who doesn't know her nephews' names, to the hero of the day, running in high-heels while leading a T-rex to save her company.

There were also many awkward characters (by this I mean, real people in that situation would never do or say that - it's cheezy movie dialogue!) including the Indian head-of-island and his ridiculous helicopter line, the Asian scientist, and the dinosaurs-for-military guy. The dynamic relationships are also poorly developed, the main one being between the brothers. It's obvious they don't get along at first and they will try to change that by the end through what they've faced together. But even if you put two strangers in mortal danger together, they will become best buddies by the end. The special brotherly bond is not formed even by the end, just the we've-faced-so-much-shit-together-and-survived bond.

Other weaknesses included the forced humor and inconsistent tone. But here is a redeeming factor. If you enter the theater without expecting much and don't think too much during the movie, you will have fun. It was, after all, a visually-stimulating two hours. Just sit back and relax, and enjoy the ride.

7.0/10 - Like I said, don't think too much while watching.