Critiquing the Slasher Movie

Puppeteer at work?

To begin with, this post is going to be about the Whedon/Goddard not-quite-horror flick The Cabin in the Woods.  It's been out on DVD for a while now and if you haven't seen it, be warned that there will be a few spoilers in this post - nothing that a quick look at rottentomatoes.com doesn't have, but still . . . if you want to skip to the "bottom line," here it is.  See this movie.

Okay, now that we have that taken care of - what sets Cabin apart?  It's a movie that viewers enjoyed, but critics loved.  The "Tomatoes" rating is a fine and respectable 76% for viewers, but a whopping 91% for critics.  Then again, I suspect critics saw different things in Cabin than most casual viewers did.  Whedon is known for genre-mashing and Cabin (which he and Goddard co-wrote) showcases his fondness for creating hybrids.  I daresay some purists in the horror world despised Cabin for that reason and I'm sure a few fans felt disappointed in the film.

Confession time - I'm not a huge horror buff.  I'm fine with suspense and I can handle creepy, but the trend towards finding more and more creative ways to hurt people (usually young females) leaves me cold.  Oh, I can trot out all the theories about why being scared serves a valid societal and psychological purpose, and I agree with part of those theories,* but I still have no desire to see most of it.  Like all genres, horror films have certain tropes that must either be obeyed or subverted - here's a great rundown of those tropes and cliches.  Cabin not only acknowledges these "rules" (for instance, the sexually-active girl has to be the first to die and the virtuous girl must be the "final girl"), it creates a world in which these rules are ironclad.  Whedon likes to toy with the "free will vs. game is rigged" conundrum and Cabin shows that off, too.

I like this movie quite a lot because it asks some questions about just who watches these movies. While there are several excellent scenes - including one in a stuffed-to-the-gills basement - the one that best underscores this point takes place in a sterile control room where a celebratory party is going on, with the relieved partygoers completely ignoring the live images on the giant viewscreens that show a girl desperately fighting for her life.  If you laugh at this scene, it's probably some very uncomfortable laughter - after all, we're also watching this and we paid money to be entertained by images of innocent people being hunted and killed.

I think that ought to make us uncomfortable.



*Stephen King has written extensively on this and his Danse Macabre is well worth a read.  If you really want to know more, check out the Journal for Horror Studies.  Yes, it's real.

Undoing Expectations

Part of the fun - as well as the work - of teaching a film class which centers on the genre of science fiction is undoing expectations.  (By the way, I suspect this is also true of teaching more traditional literature.  I know I get a kick out of showing students that, far from being boring, Shakespeare was one randy, clever, violent son of a glovemaker.  But I digress.)  I throw them into the deep end at the beginning with Fritz Lang's Metropolis and I try to maintain that level of "oh, you think you know but you don't" throughout the class.  I steer clear of rubber-suited monsters and rayguns and try to help the students see the Big Questions that are being asked.  Questions like "What's it mean to be human?" and "How do the choices I make define who I am?" and "Who is my family - and what's that mean anyway?"  By slipping free of the confines of pure realism, science fiction (at least, GOOD science fiction) can ask and answer these questions more readily than can many a feature film.

And this past week, the class got to see that by viewing the Japanese anime film Cowboy Bebop.  It's no secret that I think Watanabe's Bebop is a very well done example of the genre and, since we're focusing on sound this week and Bebop gives us an "in" to examine dubbing v. subtitling as well as the use of music to set mood (often by off setting the screen action), Bebop was a definite for the syllabus.  Bebop gives us a large ensemble cast with each cast member being fully-rounded (including the corgi), an amazing soundtrack, and characters we actually care about who are wrestling with questions of meaning, morality, and existence.  The fact I get to pair up Bebop with another small-screen to big-screen film, Joss Whedon's Serenity, just makes me shiver with happiness.  Serenity is up this week as we discuss writing.

Remember what I said about good science fiction asking the Big Questions?  So can horror, although not usually.  This weekend, Joss Whedon fans throughout the country got their long-awaited chance to pump their fists in the air when they saw "A Mutant Enemy Production" appear on the big screen with the release of The Cabin in the Woods.  I'll say nothing more aside from this - I despise slasher movies, finding them uncreative and most unkind toward women, but I'll go see this one again.  It's clever, most of the gore is hidden in deep shadow, the casting is spot-on and it'll make you think.

You know, my entire journey toward the academic study of television and movies could be said to have begun with a course during my senior year of undergraduate school.  I wanted to take a course with this particular professor and the subject matter was the American horror film.  I tend toward the squeamish and wasn't at all sure about this, but I wanted the course.  The prof is still there and I'm sure he'll be adding Cabin to the syllabus.  It takes tropes and archetypes and moves them around like figures on a feltboard.  The poster really tells you all you need to know, so please - go see it unspoiled and just enjoy what two writers who clearly love the genre can do with subverting the idiocy that is often the modern slasher.  The film was completed three years back and stalled in the morass of MGM's financial mess, but Cabin has now seen the light of day and this is one a labor of Lovecraft that's well worth the ticket price.