The Cabin as Rubik's Cube

The poster for The Cabin in the Woods (“TCITW”) is a clue to the film, if you choose to analyze it.  The cabin itself is not what it appears.  Nor is the movie.

(C) 2012 Lionsgate.

I see no cause to be mysterious about my overall opinion, so first things first:  Go see this movie. 

Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard’s The Cabin in the Woods is fun, it’s a trip of the LSD sort, a kick, a blast.  When you have seen this, you’ll realize it is not a simple teenage slasher movie. It has elements of those, of course.  It also includes 1950s science fiction as well as gathering paranoia.

The movie has some jumps, some gasps and shrieks, and a lot of laughs.  In terms of laughing to breathlessness, one of my best nights in the theatre ever was the panty-wetting “Evil Dead: The Musical,” and The Cabin in the Woods pays its homage to the “Evil Dead” movies and all those that came before and after.  There is the eponymous cabin in the woods with a lake out back.  It is its own little world.  If the camera had ever pulled back so far, I wouldn’t have been surprised to see a snow globe.

A very cool alternate poster for The Cabin in the Woods.  (C) 2012 Lionsgate

The requisite characters are all here:  The Jock, The Dumb Blonde, The Egghead, The Virgin, and the Clown.  These five archetypes are portrayed to perfection by Chris Helmsford as Curt, the Jock/Alpha Male who’s actually on academic scholarship; Anna Hutchison as Jules, the dumb blonde who only just became either on the day the story starts; Jesse Williams as Holden, the smart nice guy; Kristen Connolly as Dana, who we’ll call the good girl — virgin is a bit much to ask in this day and age — and finally the wonderful Fran Kranz as Marty, the clown, fool, the stoner. 

Kranz as Stoner Marty, Helmsford as Jock Curt, and Hutchison as Jules. (C) 2012 Lionsgate.

Two storylines converge in The Cabin In The Woods, augmented by myriad tales of times gone by.  The first storyline begins with the adroit pairing of Richard Jenkins as Sitterson and Bradley Whitford as Hadley.  Those two white shirted company men are Men In Black with pocket protectors instead of suit jackets.  Jenkins and Whitford are hilarious together, having a mundane domestic talk as they walk down a non-descript hallway to a lab with nary a test tube but screens and buttons and lots of unprofessional humor.  Each man’s last line in the film is just perfectly suited to his character.  And I won’t tell you what or why, you’ll just have to wait for it. 

It’s tough to tell who’s in charge of this massive federal expenditure, Whitford’s Hadley with his handsome sad sack face, or Jenkins’ Sitterson with his wry humor.  The delightful Amy Acker appears as a scientist named Lin, seemingly above the others, then joining in the totally unethical office pool.  Suffice to say her character from the show Angel receives a tip of the hat here as well.  Brian White looks just so trustworthy and above this behavior as Truman.  Alas, poor Truman. Oh, and there are mystery guests here as well.

Jenkins as Sitterman, Acker as Lin, Whitford as Hadley in the scientific complex.  (C) 2012 Lionsgate.

From the get-go Messrs. Whedon and Goddard (they wrote and produced together, and Mr. Goddard directed) want to let us in on the joke.  They tell us about the creepy guy at the decrepit gas station (played chillingly by Tim DeZarn), and show us the electronic web isolating the location — alas, poor bird.  We know we’ll see that web again.  Then there are the creepy 19^th century toys in the inevitable basement of the cabin.  The movie could be split screen, with its two concurrent storylines coming together in surprising fashion.  The visuals are effective, building up the clues, creating not just a horror flick, but also science fiction with social commentary, its government scientists inhabiting an underground complex that’s like Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s “The Initiative” on steroids.

Holden the Egghead, Curt, Jules, and Marty (C) 2012 Lionsgate.

The movie is speeding along on a bumpy road in an open jeep with no shocks and no windows (OK, so they drove an RV, you know what I mean), and then the explanatory denouement goes on a bit too long.  Even once we know what’s been happening — but not what’s coming next — it’s still rollicking good fun, then slows down for too much “visual explanation” of everything you’ve ever wondered about — under your bed, in the closet, or what really lurks in the murky depths of the mountain lake.  I’m a fan of less is more.

My quibble is a spoiler, so skip this paragraph if you haven’t seen the movie yet.  To me, and no one knows this better than Messrs. Whedon and Goddard, things that go bump in the night are scarier than monsters we can see.  I’m sure it was fun, giving life to creatures of myth, fable, and their imaginations, and I can just see Whedon and Goddard fighting for their favorites.  Unfortunately, neither won, so the list was not winnowed.  Hence the overlong denouement.

Whedon and Goddard do not wimp out at the end.  Honest and fitting closure is provided by something akin to my memory of the moving logo of the very old black-and-white anthology television show Thriller (which predated Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” by several decades). 

Jesse Williams and Kristen Connolly as the smart guy and the good girl.  (C) 2012 Lionsgate.

Who needs to see The Cabin in the Woods?  People who liked the first couple seasons of Supernatural.  People who like Whedon’s wit and work (e.g., Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Firefly, Serenity, and Doctor Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, among others).  People who like Drew Goddard’s work (e.g., Cloverfield, episodes of Buffy, Angel, Alias, and Lost as a writer, as well as all of those as co-producer).  Most importantly, people who like their frights seasoned with humor.  It’s date night, kids.  Go have fun.  Quibbles notwithstanding, I'm ready to go on this ride again.

~ Molly Matera, turning off the computer but not the light.  It’s dark out there.

Scary Stuff

A few weeks back, I wrote about a television series I’d just seen. It was scary and potentially profound, as many horror or science fiction stories can be, could be if they tried. It’s The Walking Dead and it’s about zombies. Or perhaps it’s about zombies the way Buffy the Vampire Slayer was about vampires. For the uninitiated, that would be “not.”

I like science fiction, some fantasy (think Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth), for the story underneath the story of aliens or futuristic societies or past societies if things had gone differently — the way those stories reflect upon our own society, asking questions we too often do not ask in life, obliquely urging us to step back, have a look, maybe even a think. Or a ponder. I like horror when it’s really scary, which is not synonymous with gory, as most horror films are. I grew to like these separate genres in the days of black-and-white television, so blood is not of interest to me. I am not, after all, a vampire.

Continuing in the vein of horror and/or science fiction films/stories/television programs, which often overlap, it’s that time of year when scary movies abound. For Halloween, sure, but perhaps it’s just a chilly weather thing. A scary movie lets us snuggle with our honeys even more on cold evenings than warm.

Are film or TV studios trying to make us ponder? I think not. They just want us to jump and scream and clutch at one another — and pay admission. Recently I tried to oblige. Last week I saw Paranormal Activity 3. At home I watched a DVD of the first film in that series. Why? They both have their startling moments and frights, sure. Is that enough? Paranormal Activity 3 makes a big mistake by explaining the paranormal activity with witches. Really? Give me Poltergeist, where the explanations do not lessen the fear.

The other day I read that William Peter Blatty had been invited to revise and expand his hastily written novel, The Exorcist. Back then he was invited to write the screenplay for the very scary film version before he’d even finished his draft of the novel, so he welcomed the opportunity to refine the book. I cannot say that I remember it well enough to recognize what he changed, but I walked briskly to a bookstore the day I read about the 40th anniversary revised edition, and finished it in three commutes. I’m a slow reader but it’s a fast read. Alas, sad as I was for the fortunes and fates of the characters, I was not afraid.

I watched scads of movies Halloween weekend, looking for something truly scary. Why? I’ve been trying to write a scary story myself, and it’s like the exceedingly unpleasant idea of pounding my head against the wall. What’s scary? I tried making a list of what frightens me, and my rational mind was certainly able to do that. But nothing I wrote was coming out scary. Nothing I see comes out scary. Nothing I read comes out scary.

Decades ago I can remember being unable to sleep as I read through Stephen King’s book of short stories, Night Shift (“The Boogeyman” particularly got me). And the original William Castle film, The House on Haunted Hill — not the remake, the remake’s not scary at all, it’s just gross. But in the original, black-and-white, when that old lady with the crazy hair and the clawed fingers glided across the room into the glow of the candle light, I screamed. Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House, that’s one scary book, as was the original 1960 William Wise film version, The Haunting — although, as usual, not the remake.

So I racked my brain trying to figure it out. I found no answers, but recalled that some years back, an actor friend proposed that his — and my — dislike of improvisation was merely a mask to hide our fear of the paucity of our own imaginations. Is that what it is? Has my imagination dwindled down so far as to disallow the conjuring part of my mind to believe? Would I now let Tinker Bell die? Surely not. That would be scary stuff indeed. In these unsatisfactory stories and films, there are moments that are startling, moments that are creepy, but are we really afraid of what’s next? Of what’s behind the curtain, beyond the door, inside the darkness?

Ah, the darkness.

The scariest movie I’ve seen of late was Mr. Klein. A 1976 French film (actually titled Monsieur Klein) directed by Joseph Losey and produced by and starring Alain Delon, my introduction to it was when I was reading posts about the film  Sarah's Key and the Vél’ d’Hiv round-up. Some posters (that is, people who post comments on web sites, as opposed to advertisements plastered around town — some of which are works of art, but that's another subject entirely) applauded Sarah’s Key as the first depiction of Vel’ d’Hiv onscreen, while others offered Mr. Klein as proof that it was already out there.

In Mr. Klein, Alain Delon plays Robert Klein, an art dealer, a businessman. He buys art, he sells art, he advises people at auctions. He’s a member of Society. In 1942, we meet him buying things at obscene discounts from Jews trying to gather cash to leave Vichy France. They are forced to sell at low prices; he is not forced to buy at the prices the articles are worth. [Potential spoiler: Actually, I felt the film’s only flaw was the repetition of some lines from the opening scene at the end. They were already echoing in my mind.] Mr. Klein receives some mail that is not his. It is addressed to his name at his well-appointed home, but it’s a newspaper printed for and by Jews — to tell them what rights they have lost, to tell them what they must do, where they must go. Mr. Klein tries to get his name off this distribution list (and we all know how impossible that is), and complains to the police, which of course puts him on their radar where he had not been before. The film tracks Mr. Klein’s attempts to find the other Mr. Klein, who is a Jew in hiding. Delon’s Mr. Klein has to deal with French bureaucracy and find official paperwork proving that his grandparents and their parents were Christian. Eventually he must sell his belongings and his home, for less than they are worth, but of course, while he is forced to sell, no one is forced to buy.

By the end of the film, that paperwork is gathered, but Delon’s Mr. Klein has already been shoved into a bus with people wearing yellow stars on their clothing, herded into the Vélodrome d’Hiver, where he hears someone else respond to his name. He feverishly pushes his way through the crowd to accost that man, then finds himself shoved onto the train with the other Mr. Klein, the train heading east out of France to the camps.

Throughout the film we root for Alain Delon (but of course). We root for him to get this all sorted out, because we know how dangerous it is to be a Jew in 1942. He tries to save himself by proving he is not a Jew, and cannot. Until finally he, and we, wonder what we were thinking.

That’s scary. Human activity, not paranormal. Not things that go bump in the night. What ordinary people do to one another, and sometimes what they do not do — now that is terrifying.

~ Molly Matera, signing off, watching the cat watch the wall, which is also a bit unnerving.

Time to Re-Read Harry Potter

“Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” flies by. Its running time is over two hours, but you won’t notice. One minute the old gang was gathering in the empty Dursley house drinking Polyjuice Potion, and the next the movie’s over and the tide has turned the story even darker than it started.

“The Deathly Hallows” needs long shots in silence, quiet moments where you can tick off the seconds during which no character speaks. Many movies need that, but many filmmakers and studios and producers don’t allow for it. “The Deadly Hallows” achieves these moments, and, hard as it may be to believe, these moments show us that it is not only for pure profit that the producers of the Harry Potter series have chosen to split the last book into two movies. This story needs two parts to do justice to the resolution of the 7-book, 8-movie series. The characters deserve this.

I’m not going to write an in-depth review, especially since the film only opened (quite stupendously) five days ago. No spoilers here. Well, I hope not. The film opens with sad relocations and silent separations. Once again, characters we like go and die on us, and everyone, including the audience, must go on without them. Bill and Fleur’s wedding at the Weasley home goes ahead as scheduled despite the sadness. Life and people -- even witches and wizards-- go on.

The growing evil strikes again, and our three heroes are separated from everyone and everything they’ve known. Harry, Hermione and Ron find themselves on their own, without their network of supportive adults and fellow students, and continue on the quest bequeathed to them by Dumbledore – to find and destroy Voldemort’s Horcruxes.

There are moments when the Harry Potter book/film series puts me in mind of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer television series: Although both Harry Potter and Buffy Summers are meant (by fate if nothing else) to be lone warriors, they win friends and influence people, remarkably loyal people. And smart! These are people we want to watch year after year, developing relationships that are deep and complex. We’ve watched these children grow up into a hard cold world, and hope they’re smart enough, strong enough, and good enough to survive.

This Harry Potter film isn’t full of laughs, although it has a few – what film that includes Rupert Grint could not. If Daniel Radcliffe has grown into a pretty young man, Grint has grown into a brawny hunk, Ron’s bad wardrobe notwithstanding. Emma Watson’s Hermione is still a delightful and strong leader, and her feelings for Ron are well played here.

We don’t see much of the adults in this film, but that’s a large part of the point. Harry, Hermione, and Ron must grow up in so many ways, and fend for themselves. They must become the adults.

A favorite of mine, Helen McCrory, is here as Lucius Malfoy’s wife, in seconds going from frightened to vicious. Jason Isaacs is wonderful as ever but more so as a trembling Lucius Malfoy. Tom Felton as the dreaded Draco is even better than usual here – yearning, afraid, and somehow far closer to decent than we or he could have thought. Helena Bonham Carter is just right as the mad Bellatrix. I’ve enjoyed her work more as she left behind normal women and moved to slightly mad to totally insane ones. I wonder what her young Queen Mum will be like in the upcoming “The King’s Speech.”

The film’s palette and light are in shades and shadows of darkest nature. The cinematographer Eduardo Serra gives us the wide open spaces of this small island, more terrifyingly lonely space than our heroes have experienced before.

Cheers to director David Yates, who kept the film moving briskly while taking the time to develop the growing personalities and relationships of Harry, Hermione, and Ron.

And cheers to Steve Kloves for a tight script accomplishing the impossible task of bringing the feeling and flavor of the story so far to the screen, and ending with a cliffhanger just when we needed it.

“Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1,” the seventh of eight films, is vastly superior in my mind to #6 (“Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince”), and makes me impatient for summer when Part 2 will open. But then the series will be done, so never mind. I’ll wait quite patiently.

~ Molly Matera, turning off the computer, but not the light. I have an urge to read the whole series again.

TiMER opens in New York!

At the 2009 Tribeca Film Festival, I saw a fun, smart, non-misogynistic romantic comedy called TiMER. This is a science fiction romantic comedy, if you can imagine that. Happily Jac Schaeffer could. TiMER was written, directed, and produced by women, and probably for that reason – I stubbornly believe – it had a hard time finding a distribution deal. Well, those women (writer and director Jac Schaeffer, and producers Jennifer Flynn, Rikki Jarrett, and Schaeffer) persevered, and yesterday TiMER opened in New York City. Only one theatre so far – City Cinemas Village East Cinema on 2nd Avenue -- but it’s a start! I had yet to create this blog when I first saw the film, so couldn’t complain online last spring that TiMER didn’t have a distributor. This spring I'm happy to say Congrats to the film’s creative team for finding a distributor, and to Capewatch Pictures for releasing TiMER. This film is delightful. Emma Caulfield (that’s Anya for Buffy the Vampire Slayer fans) and Michelle Borth star. I’ll certainly be going for a second viewing. Watch this space!

Bad news of the day – the Empire Diner is closing today. Unimaginable.

~ Thanks for stopping by ~ Molly Matera -- signing off to trek into Manhattan to see TiMER!