The official synopsis of The Cabin in the Woods, the new zombie/monster film by thriller studio Lionsgate reads like this: “Five friends go to a remote cabin in the woods. Bad things happen. If you think you know this story, think again.”
As a rule, when a group of sorority co-eds go on a vacation on an isolated and dilapidated cabin in the woods, the first idea they (and anyone remotely bred on horror films) would get is to run like the wind! Of course, then there would be no film—so compelled by bedeviling forces they brazenly and gullibly venture into the dreaded campsite-massacre territory like so many before them.
In the opening frames we’re introduced to the fated-five, cliché-stricken leads: an alpha-male jock (Chris “the almighty Thor” Hemsworth), his just-turned blonde girlfriend (Anna Hutchison), the blonde’s best friend and wide-eyed Dana (Kristen Connolly), her brainy would-be love-interest (Jesse Williams) and the group’s resident paranoid pot-smoker (Fran Kranz).
In the first few screen minutes they mount an RV and travel to an off-the-grid cabin for the weekend, where Dana reads an ill-omen passage from a tattered diary in a dusty, hidden shelter and they meet death by redneck zombies.
There’s something eerily uncanny about this group—and the screenplay. The brainless jock and his sorority girlfriend aren’t that dumb. Dana isn’t innocent (she is getting over a fling with her college professor) and the pothead may be the wisest underdog of all. Plus, they’re on TV—at least for a hundred or so people monitoring their progress.
Unlike The Hunger Games and The Truman Show, in pops a hush-hush government controlled outlet initiating and supervising the group’s actions. The unit is run by a secreted head honcho—an unaccredited actress whose name I will not say for spoiler’s sake. Her three lead officers manning the consoles are Amy Acker, Richard Jenkins and Bradley Whitford (the last two’s all-in-a-days-work attitude of orchestrating the events, grounds the genuineness of the film).
Also in this circle is Brian White, their security officer who represents the audience’s response to what’s happening to the baffled group. Like us, he’s rendered dumbfounded and ludicrous by the horror and silliness of Jenkin’s and White’s actions.
Like its closest cinematic relative, Sam Raimi’s brilliant Drag Me to Hell, Cabin works its genre-inflicted obligations into an inventive, smart-as-whip screenplay by Drew Goddard (writer of Cloverfield, also the debuting director) and Joss Whedon.
The duo that last collaborated in television’s Buffy, fling axiomatic wit and a crisp new spin to the formula, especially by the climatic run, where we see almost every member of the slasher/horror classification run loose around the place. But a lot happens before that.
Produced by Joss Whedon and Released by Lionsgate, Cabin in the Woods is rated R for nudity, gallons of blood and dozens of death by every imaginable psycho/monsters out there.
Die hard in space
Europa Corp and Luc Besson’s Lockout is a low-budget ($20 million) typical hostage-rescue flick set in space that runs with a B-grade attitude. It has Guy Pearce (Madonna’s ex) as an unlikely action hero, and the only go to guy who can save the girl in time. And by the end of the film, he not only saves the day and the heroine, but the film as well; if not wholly then at least partially from being an unsatisfying bomb. In the year 2079, a wise-cracking, cigarette lighter-sporting and battered-looking ex-CIA named Snow (Pearce) is set for jail for a framed murder. However, all can be forgotten if he rescues the President’s daughter, Emilie Warnock (Maggie Grace of Taken).
Emilie was on a fact-finding humanitarian mission to an Alcatraz-like space jail called MS One to find the ill-effects of cryogenic sleep which the inmates are kept under. Her good intentions are gulped down by stupidly written situations, and she gets kidnapped when the space prison gets overridden with mayhem once the criminals are woken up and let loose.
There is not much to like in Lockout, but as in past Besson ventures he has a knack of manufacturing likable heroes (Jean Reno from Leon, Jason Stratham from Transporter and Taken’s Liam Neeson).
Pearce’s trigger-finger pales in comparison to his mouth, as he drops more one-liners than the bad guys he offs. His deadpan humor is delivered with the right amount of boredom and timing. Grace looks pretty and adequately supports Pearce with her headstrong heroine bit in the second act. And finally Alex, the criminal who runs things, played by Vincent Regan, looks the most sincere (and a little awkward).
Besides them, the rest of the acting is over-the-top and fake—as are the special effects; the bad, jumpy and choppy editing doesn’t help either.
Released by Europa Corp and Film District, Lockout is rated PG-13. It’s watching prerequisite is a knack for enjoying bad, ludicrous B-grade action. — Farheen Jawaid