Was Marty justified in letting the world burn due to the horrific trauma he was forced to endure, or was he just a self-righteous Straw Nihilist who doomed the world because he wanted to "rock the boat"? And for that matter, was it even his choice to refuse to sacrifice himself, or did the ancient ones influence him to choose world annihilation because they wanted to end it anyway?
Awesome Art: The poster, depicting the titular cabin being twisted like a Rubik's Cube, perfectly captures the spirit of the story without giving anything away for newcomers.
Curt jumping the ravine in what would be a heroic moment, only to get killed hit the barrier and falling to the ground, hitting the barrier several more times in the process.
The monster attack is horrific and funny at the same time. It starts with the moment the elevators all open, unleashing all of the monsters. And then they open again and unleash even more monsters. And then Patience. More specific Bloody Hilarious moments include someone being stabbed by an evil unicorn and the merman expunging blood out of its blowhole.
Director Displacement: Poor, poor Drew Goddard. No recognition for writing Cloverfield due to it being produced by J. J. Abrams, then no recognition for co-writing and directing this, his first directing gig on top of that, due to Joss Whedon being a co-writer.
"Kevin". Whoever he is, he exists as nothing more than a name on the whiteboard (and a brief mention in the novelization), but he has inspired a plethora of trope entries, Epileptic Trees, and Wild Mass Guessing, far more than any other character.
The killer unicorn and the lamprey-faced ballerina, who both only make brief appearances as two of the many monsters the Organization has in storage, are also incredibly popular with fans, the former for being incredibly unexpected (and hilarious) and the latter for being absolutely terrifying.
There are hundreds of monsters in the cells below. Plenty of fics involve the protagonists releasing a different monster instead of the Buckners.
What were the previous successful sacrifices like, and what monsters did they "choose"?
The Faculty aside, what was the failure in '98, and how was it the chem department's fault?
What are the ritual requirements in other countries? And how does everyone but America and Japan keep failing every time?
Fan Nickname: The Sugarplum Fairy monster, a little girl in a ballerina outfit with a Lamprey Mouth, is often referred to by fans as "Ballerina Dentata".
Fanon: The chem department's failure in 1998 is attributed to the film The Faculty, in which none of the protagonists die, the supposed virgin is revealed as the monster, and said monster's undoing is triggered by the drugs another character makes. Damn chem department indeed.
Fan-Preferred Couple: Dana and Marty are the subject of the lion's share of shipping fics written about the film. It is also far more popular than the canon Dana/Holden. This seems to be because of Dana/Holden being forced by the Organization In-Universe to emulate a horror movie, along with Dana and Marty being the only two survivors.
Genius Bonus: The evil unicorn makes a lot of sense within the context of the stock slasher movie plot. The unicorns of folklore were actually quite wild and violent — and the only thing that could tame one was a virgin female. One has to wonder how the unicorn would have reacted to Dana.
Anna Hutchison previously starred in Power Rangers Jungle Fury, and this was one of her first roles afterwards. Her situation is quite similar to actress Cerina Vincent, who was in Power Rangers Lost Galaxy and went on to star in the similar film Cabin Fever. Both actresses played "The Whore", both went topless, both were the first to die, and both had played the Yellow Ranger.
Right around the time the film was finally released Supernatural coincidentally wound up airing an episode with a similar scene of an evil unicorn impaling someone to death with its horn.
The comment about one of the potential monsters being a merman seems a whole lot funnier when you consider the "killer merperson" concept would go on to be used in the Serbian-American horror movie Nymph. And then the Freeform TV series Siren (2018) exploring a Darker and Edgier take on mermaid mythology. Notably, however, the evil merpeople are female in those respective works — so Hadley still hasn't seen a merman yet.
Come 2017 and Resident Evil 7: Biohazard, and the Buckners aren't the only zombie redneck torture family anymore.
When the kids find the Artifact of Doom museum in the basement, Thor — sorry, Chris Hemsworth is the one who nearly unlocks the orb. (Conveniently, Thor is the first one to bring up the Infinity Stones to the Avengers!)
The briefly-seen mutants vaguely resemble the later-debuting horror monsters the Tethered from Us.
Magnificent Bastard: The Director is the head-strong leader of the Organization, charged with keeping the evil gods that slumber below the Earth dormant so they will spare humanity. Under the Director's guidance, the Organization selects Human Sacrifices every year and manipulates them into taking part in an elaborate ritual narrative. The Director is the first to notice that Marty's survival is threatening the ritual's completion, and succeeds in talking Dana into killing Marty before resolving to kill Marty herself when that fails. Far more professional and strategic than her subordinates, the Director has sacrificed numerous lives for the greater good while harboring no ill will towards her victims whatsoever.
Memetic Mutation: "The evil is defeated" line from the Japanese school children is frequently used when, well, something considered evil is defeated. An offspring meme is to provide "context" to the scene, by posting it in full, up to Sitterson's Cluster F-Bomb, with no explanation.
A horror movie about making a horror movie. Characters that revolve around slowly becoming their roles. A higher being out for blood that is only satiated with a new film. We are talking about Wes Craven's New Nightmare, right?
Likewise, Wes Craven's later Scream movies were meta-horror movies that, like The Cabin in the Woods, subverted and deconstructed horror character archetypes, such as the Final Girl, while playing with common horror conventions and "rules".
The Signature Scene of the monsters' cells opening up and ambushing the facility security team is exactly like what happens in another of Joss Whedon's properties, the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode "Primeval", when an army of caged monsters is suddenly released to slaughter a secret government agency.
One-Scene Wonder: We only get to see many of the monsters in brief cameos. One of the most memorable is the evil unicorn.
Rooting for the Empire: Once you that the kids must be sacrificed to prevent the end of the world, is it out of the question to start rooting for the monsters and/or the Organization?
Signature Scene: The entire, ridiculously violent final act. The first shot of the monsters' cells opening up and ambushing the facility security team, in particular, gets passed around often online.
Special Effect Failure: Jules's head, when dropped by Dana, bounces as you'd expect a light prop head to bounce. Even the sound effects don't match the weight a head should have hitting the floor.
Believe it or not, this makes for a pretty good adaptation of the SCP Foundation. The main bad guys are a nebulous organization of questionable morality which possesses an enormous catalogue of monsters and other dangerous supernatural items (in this case, horror movie baddies), which it keeps and controls so as to prevent an XK-Class end-of-the-world event. And when the heroes find out about the lengths they're willing to go to, they take one look and say, "Fuck it, better to let the world end." The similarities get even creepier. S. Andrew Swann's proposal for SCP-001 is that it's the people who are writing the website. In this world. And a very good case could be made that, in Cabin in the Woods, the Ancient Ones represent horror fans. This was discussed on the site and declared to be Containment Breach: The Movie — unrelated to Containment Breach, the actual(ly freaky) SCP video game.
Iceburg 7: Though I'd like to hope we wouldn't fail so badly. I mean, people haven't failed that badly at killing five teenagers since Rita Repulsa. emissary666: The idea that an entire site devoted to the prevention of an XK-scenario was so incredibly unprepared for a containment breach was just so shocking to me; especially how easy it was to initiate a breach event when they only kept Keter-level monsters.
The movie's troperiffic nature and the wide variety of monsters shown could make it one to How to Survive a Horror Movie. In the book's updated edition, the author outright says that Cabin is "the reason there will never be a movie adaptation of the book you're currently reading".
Squick: Mordecai spitting chewing tobacco several times during the gas station scene.
Tear Jerker: The fates of Curt and Jules. The beginning of the film shows the both of them to be kind, smart people who care about each other and their friends, but for the purposes of the Ancient Ones, they are drugged and manipulated into becoming a Jerk Jock and Dumb Blonde respectively, and then both are brutally killed.
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Jules is the first to die at the forty-minute mark. Due to Anna Hutchinson's fun performance and the character's likability before the in-universe Executive Meddling, some fans wish that she had been the protagonist instead of Dana. CinemaSins' video about this movie also pointed this out, calling out that Jules is a girl in a committed and happy relationship while Dana is a girl that just ended an extra-marital affair with her teacher, and since neither is an actual virgin, Jules would be a better fit for the role of The Virgin than Dana. Though this is likely part of the point.note The likely reason Jules was shoehorned into being "The Whore" is because she has a boyfriend and therefore would be more prone to having sex on the trip. Dana being single and reluctant to hook up with a new boy makes her less likely to do anything "whoreish".
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Some of the other monsters would have made even more spectacular movies. Who wouldn't want to see an evil unicorn terrorizing a bunch of kids? Given what the movie's actually about, though, this is quite fitting. The Controllers are shown to be tired of the "traditional" scenarios and desire something that goes outside the box, but the Ancient Ones want Strictly Formula, and the Controllers know their audience all too well. They're wasting perfectly good plots, and they know it.
Unintentional Period Piece: The film is a scathing satire of the horror genre as it existed in the 2000s, an era where it seemed to many horror fans that the genre was turning into a mess of worn-out tropes and clichés and had forgotten how to tell new, interesting, and scary stories. This is not a complaint that one could so easily throw at horror in the 2010s, a time when many fans felt that the genre entered a new golden age of creativity, with many of the tropes lampooned in this film being discredited in the years that followed. Andy Crump has argued in The Hollywood Reporter that this film, in fact, played an indirect role in that shift, sparking a new demand among moviegoers and filmmakers alike for more innovation while opening up a more highbrow, intellectual discourse around what had been considered a fairly trashy genre.
Vanilla Protagonist: Dana of course. As a deconstruction of the Final Girl, she's shoe-horned into being the boring one in the group. Tellingly, a lot of fans prefer Jules.
The Woobie: Patience. Raised in an ultra-religious redneck torture family, she feels out of place because she reads books. Then her father goes insane and traps the family in the basement and then cuts off her arm. Instead of dying, though, she is condemned to rise as a mindless zombie. And her entire existence as an innocent tortured girl-turned-zombie was created by a facility that needed a plot-triggering villain.
for SCP-001 is that it's the people who are writing the website. In this world. And a very good case could be made that, in Cabin in the Woods, the Ancient Ones represent horror fans. This was discussed on the site and declared to be Containment Breach: The Movie