This is my first night off after my first week on 3rd shift. I’m watching my Blu-ray of The Cabin in the Woods. Part of the Ritual is that the sacrifices must “choose their fate”; they’re even given a warning to turn back (the Harbinger), then the artefact they choose summons their killer. Of course none of their “choices” are meaningful. They’re manipulated by drugs, have no reason to believe the Harbinger, and don’t realize what the artefacts do. Would the Ritual if the participants were told in advance that they’re volunteering as human sacrifices to keep the Ancient Ones from destroying humanity? That’s basically what the Director was asking Dana & Marty (well Marty) to do at the end.
I’m thinking “No.” Volunteers would make the job tremendously easier, so I’m assuming there’s a reason they wouldn’t use them. (Beyond, “It wouldn’t be as good a movie,” obviously.) Instead of a secret facility full of monsters, stuff it full of abandoned or orphaned children, and brainwash them into being willing victims, and you have a practically foolproof way of completing the ritual every year.
The point of the ritual, I think, is to be as sadistic as possible. The Old Ones are only going to be satisfied if the victims die screaming in agony, fear, and confusion. An act of self-sacrifice kind of spoils it - it’s no good if they want to be there. The Old Ones are a stand in for the viewer. They want a good, gore-soaked show, and if they don’t get it, they’re going to be pissed.
If Marty had listened to Sigourney Weaver and killed himself, I suspect the world would still have ended. On the other hand, if Dana murders her last surviving friend in cold blood, that would probably have been a sufficiently horrible outcome that the Old Ones would have been satisfied, and gone back to sleep.
Wouldn’t some spoiler warnings be appropriate here, for those who have not seen the film? Just sayin’.
No. Just sayin’,
Please tell me you’re joking.
You’re right. :smack: The whole point of the Ritual is that the Sacrifices suffer as much as possible before they die. Actual volunteers wouldn’t be as terrified if they had any idea what to expect. I think Marty killing himself or allowing himself to be killed might still have worked because of all the suffering he went through that night though. Of course the Director would’ve just have been desperately clutching at straws. The movie’s great, but I still hate the ending.
Actually, I quite enjoyed the ending. It’s the rebellion of characters against the audience that makes the film.
It’s clear to me – and least to me, I guess – that the true horror of Cabin in the Woods is the audience that WANTS TO SEE SUCH FILMS. The elder Gods are a stand in for the audience. Both want to see these characters in pain and dying for their own amusement. It’s not a pretty comment on the genre.
Am I forgetting something about the movie ending? Didn’t the gods rise because the woman didn’t die? I actually really liked the movie, and I differ from Jonathan, I don’t want to see everyone die in such films, I want to see the protagonist win.
WTH. This is a recent movie. One where, for the better part of the movie, you are supposed to be wondering exactly who is running the cabin and why. You are not only giving away that, but you are also spoiling the big reveal of Sigourney Weaver who is not even in the movie credits. If I knew all that ahead of time, it would definitely take away something from the movie.
Good of you to advocate for someone so hypothetically dense that they click on what is clearly a plot-point thread for a movie they haven’t seen.
If they have not seen it, then they would not know it is an important reveal, would they?
Why would someone who has not seen this movie ever even consider clicking on this thread?
Because they are potentially interested in seeing the movie? You can have a discussion about a film without giving away its ending or twist.
drastic_quench, there’s no reason to insult someone who asked a legitimate question.
The OP is asking people to speculate about the plot of a recent movie. It is considered polite to indicate where spoilers are being discussed, esp. in a movie like this one with (apparently – I haven’t seen it) a big twist in it. It is, in fact, in line with the rules of this forum that you do so.
You could have disagreed without being so disagreeable.
I am giving you a warning for being a jerk
twickster, Cafe Society moderator
Jesus fucking Christ that is ridiculous.
Like me!
:smack:
I wondered if the ancients planned on ending the world no matter what. But first they were going to turn their wrath on the organization, who were feeling a little too secure and uppity with their way of selecting the sacrifices.
Honestly that was what I wondered too, maybe the ancients were sick of “lunchables” and wanted some rabbit with salty blood fresh from the kill.
Yeah, that’s what really makes the movie great.
First time watching it, during the outdoor sex scene I thought to myself that it would have been great to cut back to the control room as Jules opens her shirt. We, the actual audience, wouldn’t see Jules’ bare breasts but we would see from their reaction in the control room that we would have if the filmmakers hadn’t just cut to a reaction shot. I was looking at it as a movie that screws with the audience’s expectations. Cutting away before we see her bare breasts would have been a great joke to play on the audience, I thought.
But after rewatching it, I came to see it in a way similar to how you describe it. In this case, the audience wants to see the attractive young actess’s bare breasts. We know that a minute after we see some good nudity the girl is going to get hacked up, still we want to see her breasts because we like seeing breasts and that’s part of the reason that we come to these kinds of movies.
I came to realize the scene as shot affected me on a much deeper level than the jokey alternative that I had thought would have been good. Notice that Jules’ death is the one death that we the audience are really given a moment to process. There is the quiet prayer in the control room and there is a certain reverence to the way Gary opens and pulls the lever to break the first pool of blood to fill the wall carving. The filmmakers make us reflect upon the fact that a human being was just brutally killed. And they impose this reflection upon us immediately after giving us the gratuitous nudity we had been rooting for.
On the second or third viewing of this movie, I realized I felt complicit in Jules’ death because I had just enjoyed seeing her bare breasts knowing full well what was to follow.
Never have I felt complicit in the death of an entirely fictional character. It’s because, as you say, for this movie the character that stands in for the audience is an audience and that audience demands that horrible things befall innocent people.
Yep. A critique of a brutal audience of a brutal genre.
Quite clever, in its own way. And rough on the viewer - if that viewer is self-aware.