The Cabin in the Woods, a Fun Horror or a Meta Dark Comedy?

Many horror fans, including myself, love The Cabin in the Woods. Its not only a very

complex film but offers an interesting perspective into the genre of horror. Its not the last

horror movie but it may be the last horror film of this kind It will challenge people to do

something totally different says Wes Craven, creator and director of A Nightmare on Elm Street,

Scream, and The Hills Have Eyes. However, this paper is not here to describe all the wonderful

details, inside jokes, and hidden gems that make this movie a success. Our goal is to decide if

this film should be considered a horror film within the parameters and definition provided to us

by Nol Carroll in the first few chapters of his book The Philosophy of Horror, in that a monster

must be impure, threatening, and not of anything modern science can produce.

So that there is not a necessity to have seen this film before our analysis begins, here is a

brief summary. Our story starts by introducing us to the two main groups of people the story

revolves around. Our protagonists, cookie cutter teens who are unsuspectingly going to a cabin

(in the woods) to die, and the two men who are the directors of their deaths. I should point out

that these directors are in a facility pushing buttons and flipping switches to release gas, open

and close doors, and many other things to put our protagonists into typical horror situations. The

story finally kicks off when the teens wander into the basement of this cabin to find a plethora of

objects, later we learn each of these objects correspond to particular monsters and their ultimate

demise. When the kids pick their monster, hillbilly zombies, the killing begins. We later learn

that each of their deaths are done in a particular order and that this is not a sadistic reality show

but instead an ancient ritual to keep the ancient ones from destroying the world. But of course
things do not go as planned and the world is destroyed by the end of the film. So how does this

insane meta film equate to horror as defined by Carroll? Pretty well actually, and while there is

room for judgment and differing personal ideas it fits well into Carrolls definition.

Carroll lays a few rules for what must be contained in a horror movie, particularly with

the monsters. A monster is defined as any being not believed to exist now according to

contemporary science (Carroll 27). Additionally Carroll requires our monster to be both

threatening and impure to create both fear and disgust (28). In Cabin, the monster within context

of the horror movie is resurrected, half decayed, zombie hillbillies. Each zombie wields its own

weapon and is hungry to kill, and with no fear of death they are very threatening. Every character

does fight against these zombies and are not afraid to touch them when they are being attacked,

but we see that their preferred defense against them is to run away and avoid them because they

are dangerous and disgusting, making them impure. Now, obviously modern science is not able

to create zombies (as far as we know) but in the context of the film it appears that these creatures

have been engineered and are not actually zombies but something made to act and resemble

zombies. While this draws you into the film, its not because of the absurdity of the creature but

how they are able to make them and what else is in the facility. Another gauge of the monster is

that it must be a plausible being (Carroll 27). This is where Cabin exceeds many other horror

movies, which offer a scary villain supposedly created through some curse or reading of some

phrase. Cabin however, shows us that these monsters have been created for a purpose,

supposedly by science, based on horror creatures from movies and entertainment, arguably

giving them an even more plausible existence.

 In the context of horror, Carroll has an additional requirement with the projection of

emotion the viewer is supposed to experience in parallel with the characters (30). This

benchmark means that a true and successful horror film elicits responses of the audience in the

same manner that the characters experience them (Carroll 30). If Cabin is applied to this theory

one could go both ways. While there is a sense of dread and a fear of death for the characters and

a hope of escape that the audience experiences, not to mention a few decent jump scares that

startle both audience and character, one could make the argument that the fear is lost when the

mystery is stripped away. By placing people with a seemingly unbeatable free will controlling

system in command stacks the deck against the protagonists. But we are not only seeing if it

works for everyone, but a general emotional response and I believe that this film eventually

works well near the end when two of the teens end up in the facility, creating a better sense with

the audience of oh hey, they might actually make it out (Carroll 31).

Lastly, I would like to say that while I feel this film coincides with Carrolls definition of

a horror film, especially if stripped away from the meta aspect of the controlling facility, I

personally see this film better classified as a dark comedy within my own parameters of horror.

While the monsters are very impure and threatening, one could decide that due to the lack of

emotional parallels between audience and character, and the frightening creatures of known

existence leaves the audience without the feeling of dread or terror in their system. I very much

enjoy this film and while it is not void of a few good scares, I believe that the overall glue of this

film that makes it so successful is the dramatic irony and understanding of the horror genre that

us the audience have while watching this film. While it is compelling it never seems to draw you
in on the horror story but more of the background and more science-fiction abstract concepts and

lore. As far as horror movies go, its not the scariest but its still an excellent movie.

Works Cited
Carroll, Noell. The Philosophy of Horror. New York: Routledge, 1989. Print.

The Cabin in the Woods. Directed by Drew Goddard, Lionsgate, 2012, Amazon Video.