Director: Mike Flanagan
Cast: Karen Gillan, Brenton Thwaites, Katee Sackhoff, Rory Cochrane
Have I Seen it Before: Yes! So odd that I come to a movie for Beyond the Cabin in the Woods that I took in on my own and hadn’t recommended for the show.
Did I Like It: That isn’t to say I don’t recommend the movie now. It may be one of the most well-calibrated horror movies I’ve seen in a good long time. There’s just enough squeamish self-mutilation in it to set ones teeth on edge. There’s just enough jump scares to occasionally spike one’s blood pressure. There’s just enough palpable dread—of a Lovecraftian, except without the Lovecraftian bullshit, type—to only occasionally make the viewer question the real estate choices of the characters. Throw in a dollop of kids in absolutely hopeless danger to bring it all home.
But really? It’s a film about childhood trauma, in which the flashbacks to that trauma take place at a time when I was in college. So, now I’m thinking about the passage of time, and my own eventual demise. You know, horror stuff.
There’s a quieter subversion going on here, as well. Casting Gillan, already at this point a likable presence in genre entertainment, as a cold, deflated obsessive already puts the audience that would have come in for this film off balance. Flanagan walked here so Gunn could run with Gillan in Guardians of the Galaxy (2014) and its sequels.
I’d be tempted to lament that there was—or hasn’t, until this point—been a sequel to the film. It gives the ending shots of the film a particular melancholy that might not be satisfying to all audiences, but I ultimately think the futility of trying to deal with the mirror is key to the whole affair. It’s only a little bit about trauma—as many, many horror films are now about—but its far more about obsession.
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