Sound of My Voice

Please note that this review contains some spoilers for Sound of My Voice.

In the deafening world of blockbuster cinema, there seems to be less and less room for openended-ness. Big movies aren't allowed to leave things open to interpretation; they have to provide a familiar story in which the good guys overcome the bad guys, usually with little moral ambiguity. Films like that can be fun (ie, The Avengers), but they seem to reinforce a mindset in audiences that everything has to be handed to you on a silver platter. If a film only hints at something, it is a failure and not a joy. I love films that leave their stories open to interpretation. Films like Donnie Darko, Martha Marcy May Marlene (which is similar in many ways to Sound of My Voice), or the works of David Lynch all leave you without a clear story resolution, instead providing you with clues and details that you can then choose to interpret. Sadly, I see so many audiences choose to reject that option, instead accusing movies like that of being incomplete, or worse, amateurish, as if the filmmaker didn't know exactly what they were doing by ending their film in a challenging way. If a film doesn't try to challenge you, it probably isn't that great of a film.

So I come to Sound of My Voice with some mixed feelings in this regard. It tells the story of a couple who hear of a cult in the San Fernando Valley in which their leader Maggie (Brit Marling, who also co-wrote) claims to be from the future. They decide to infiltrate the cult to record what is going on in the hopes of exposing her as a fraud and making a documentary about the experience. Of course, things don't go as planned as they both start falling for the cult in different ways. The film is about two things (well probably many more than two things, but two worth discussion in the context of my opening paragraph), one a broad idea, the other a specific question. On the broad side, it questions the idea of faith in one's ideals, and wonders why someone would join a religious cult. More specifically, it wants you to question if Maggie is from the future or a fraud. In the weaving of these two ideas, the film takes you down a narrative hole that in thrilling and emotional, but also a bit of a cheat. I fear that Sound of My Voice could be the kind of openended film that cheats in how it achieves its openended-ness, thus making those other films that do it "right" look bad by association.

You see, Sound of My Voice doesn't just hint at it being possible Maggie is from the future or that she is a fraud. No, the film gives you direct conflicting evidence for both. It feels as though it is not actually possible to decipher what she really is because the film gives you too much solid evidence for both cases, thereby making it impossible for either to really be true when judging the film as a whole. At first this bothered me, specifically because the film is really great all the way through and I was engaged in trying to decipher what I was seeing. The film plays around with how it doles out information in an interesting way. It is structured like a novel with ten chapters, and the story will purposefully end a chapter on a cliffhanger of sorts, often not to be resolved immediately after. It will introduce new characters with no explanation as to who they are or what they are doing until much later, intriguing you with new threads and not immediately paying them off. It's a great example of how to structure a film in such a way to keep you constantly wanting to know more. And yet it all builds to an ending in which there is no clear resolution to the question we've been asking. It's an ending I would normally love, had the film not been so specific in detailing why Maggie both can and can't be from the future.

So I pondered this problem for a bit, and I came back to the film's other main point - how does faith play a part in what these characters decide to do? I am not religious, so I find it fascinating that people can so readily buy into any one faith while denying all others. In the face of logic or facts, all religions would fall apart to some degree. And yet those in the religion still hold fast to their beliefs. They're presented with facts both for and against their beliefs, and they make the decision to believe them anyway. That's exactly what Sound of My Voice challanges you to do. We know for a fact Maggie can't be from the future, and yet we see specific moments in which something extraordinary is going on that can probably only be explained by Maggie telling us the truth about where she came from. The film forces us to take sides knowing that we'll probably be wrong no matter what we choose. As an audience member, we have to have faith in our interpretation even though we know there is evidence to the contrary. I think that not coming from a religious background, it was hard for me to see that at first. Once I realized that's what the film was trying to do with its contradictory ending, it made more sense in the context of the questions it had been raising the whole time. Tonally it works, even if it feels like a cheat.

Sound of My Voice proves a good example of how easy it can be to dismiss a film for not providing you with what you expect. I expected either a clear-cut ending or an ending that allowed me to make my own reasoned decision. By providing me neither, by specifically forcing me to accept that my interpretation will be partially wrong, it proves to be that much stronger in the exploration of its themes. It's an extremely risky move, but it basically works. I suspect I would have been more satisfied had it catered to my own personal needs as a filmgoer, but then that isn't always the point of seeing a movie. Sometimes it's fun to be challenged.

The Avengers

I wonder if people get nervous whenever Tony Stark decides to build a tower in their part of town. After the events of the two Iron Man movies, it should certainly raise some red flags; after the events of The Avengers, I doubt the city will ever again give him a permit. It would seem that wherever Stark goes, destruction follows, and now that he has a team of superheroes in his wake, the chaos has been ramped up to the nth degree. To say that The Avengers is the Marvel film on the grandest scale yet is perhaps not the best indicator of its scope - Marvel movies have never really gotten a feel for large scale story telling. And while I suspect that in other hands this could have been a far more grand scale film than it already is, I think that Joss Whedon got the size of the film just right. Any bigger and we would have lost sight of those characters at the center.

The Avengers has a lot to live up to. For most that means following in the footsteps of the crowd pleasing Iron Man. To me, it means justifying the mishandling of Iron Man 2 and Thor in service of this film. Once Marvel got it in their head that they could make an Avengers film, they sacrificed the integrity of their films in order to set this one up. These films were no longer aloud to be their own thing, instead shoehorning in every reference and Easter egg possible so that people would be ready for the main event. Smart long term marketing? Perhaps, but it made for some abysmal storytelling that seemed to go in circles. So if The Avengers was going to be any good, it would have to make an argument for this over indulgent setup. Thankfully, it mostly does pay off those previous films. The way in which it most pays them off is in the casting, which has turned out to be pretty much perfect in every sense.

Robert Downey Jr was such an obvious and smart choice for Tony Stark that this film was pretty well set up no matter how the other prequels went. Luckily, the other heroes on the team are just as fun to watch, each for their own reasons. Chris Evans seemed like the most unlikely casting choice as Captain America, but he exudes innocent charm and charisma. In the face of a threat as big as the one we see in this film he would seemingly appear useless as his powers aren't so inherently helpful against aliens and demi-Gods. But instead of relying on strength, he relies on his innate leadership abilities, bringing together disparate heroes when the world needs them most. As Thor, Chris Hemsworth was about the only redeeming thing in his titular film. Here he is allowed to continue to shine as a man completely out of place in our world, and the film wisely gives him a routing interest in the story by making his brother Loki the villain. As Loki, Tom Hiddleston is perhaps the real surprise. He was ok in Thor, but never given a lot to do. As the main antagonist, though, he seethes narcissism and hatred, his contempt for those around him palpable. He has such a high view of himself and such a low view of everyone else that you really want to see him get his comeuppance. Indeed, this is perhaps the first Marvel film that gets the villain right. It's a shame, then, that it looses sight of the villain at key moments.

There is a flaw inherent in the concept of The Avengers that at times brings the film down a notch. When you assemble a team of superheoes together, they need to face a threat that is worthy of their talents. If they were dropped into the world of The Dark Knight, for example, they would simply trounce the Joker in a few minutes and there would be no story. As a result, the film has to rely on the increasingly frustrating tactic in Marvel films of making the big threat an army of interchangeable creatures with no personality and tenuous motive. Thor was again the worst offender, but this film is also pretty guilty in that regard. Loki is working with an alien race to conquer Earth, so when he opens a portal to our planet and brings the aliens in they take center stage and Loki winds up being overwhelmed in the narrative. We lose sight of his plan in favor of generic fight scenes and chases. But how could it be any other way? Simply defeating Loki wouldn't be enough for these characters, so the film had to raise the stakes somehow. I fear that Marvel will never find a proper balance in this regard, unless they build a team of famous supervillains akin to The Avengers (alas, if only they had the rights to the Sinister Six). It just feels like such a shame that they finally created a truly entertaining villain in Loki, and then sideline him for a more generic evil that no one cares about.

Another aspect that feels shoehorned in is the need to show the Avengers fighting with each other. I think they came up with the best possible explanation as to why it happens (you'd probably want to smack around Tony Stark too if you saw him prodding Bruce Banner just because he wants to see the Hulk come out), but it still feels like an utter waste of time, especially when the film in nearly two and a half hours long. It might be fun for comic fans to see Thor and Iron Man duke it out, but it is ultimately a boring sight to behold. We know neither one will win, and their fight is pretty meaningless - not to mention boringly staged. I could have done with less of this and more character development on some of the smaller characters, like Hawkeye or even Bruce Banner. The Hulk is also an offender in the pointless fighting issue, but for another reason altogether. We see him lose control and go crazy amongst his teammates halfway through the film, and I think this scene is handled very well. The problem is that there is no logic behind it. The Hulk tries to kill two characters that are on his side, with no real reason. We're led to believe that he simply can't control himself, and he'll kill whoever is around in an uncontrollable fit of rage. Fine, I can get behind that. So what to make of the fact that in the final showdown, he doesn't have these very same rage issues? He can suddenly tell friend from foe, seemingly only because the film needs him to. We never see him learn to control this urge between the two hulk-outs, so either he could always control it or he couldn't - you can't have it both ways.

What the film gets absolutely right is the balance between characters. There was always a danger that this could turn into the Iron Man and friends show, and thankfully that isn't the case. Iron Man, Captain America, and Thor all get fairly equal screen time and subplots, and you feel like the film justifies every member of the team. Well except for maybe Hawkeye and Black Widow. But I like that the film hints at the idea that before there were people with superpowers, these two were the best the world had in the fight against evil. I would have liked a bit more time spent on what it means for these human heroes to be sidelined by super soldiers and Gods, instead of a mostly useless subplot about Hawkeye being hypnotized. And even Agent Coulson, the most ubiquitous character in these films, finally gets a chance to shine. In fact, I feel that the way this film uses Coulson justifies the way they forced him into every other film, often to those films detriment. Coulson could have been another lackey in a film like this, and instead he is almost the audiences' identification point within the team. It's a smart way to handle a character with no overt use in a film like this.

Is The Avengers the ultimate culmination of the Marvel universe? Does it live up to the constant world building we've endured over the last four years? Not totally. But then, given how unwieldy this could have been, it's surprising how streamlined and coherent the whole thing actually is. I'd still argue in favor of last year's Captain America film as being the best movie in this series, mostly due to a better focus on character, a unique setting, and a threat worthy of that character, but this is perhaps a solid second. A movie like The Avengers is never going to be the kind of film that rises above the genre with aspirations of being great cinema, but it certainly defines the genre as well as any film could. If you like funny quips, action setpieces that at times lack narrative logic, and a pat story arc, you could do far worse than a film like this.

A Night at The Secret Film Festival

On Saturday night I attended what is known as a Secret Film Festival. For those who have never been to one, it is a tradition some art house theaters like to have where you buy a ticket and for 12-24 hours the theater will program a series of unannounced films for an audience to watch, usually genre and foreign films. What makes them so special is they're usually run by someone with a very strong passion for film, so you get to put your fate in their hands, trusting them to deliver some memorable movies you might not have otherwise seen. The most famous version of these is certainly the Butt-Numb-A-Thon held at the Alamo Drafthouse every December. I had been to a Secret Film Festival just once before, back in college in 2006, but I got the opportunity to attend another one at the beautiful Del Mar theater in Santa Cruz, California this weekend and couldn't pass it up.

With snacks and pillows in hand, we showed up for the midnight fest, ready to be entertained. Staying up all night is tricky, and it often depends greatly on the movies to be fun and engaging. One wrong film and you will likely succumb to slumber. I learned that lesson the last time I went, falling asleep in the wee hours of the night and missing a film. Luckily I made it through the whole night without so much as a nod off, a testament to the quality and diversity of films on display here. There is a trick to programming the right films for an audience - you can't just go with six horror movies because you'll wear the audience out, no matter how visceral the films might be. You need to change the format up with every film in order to give a full and wide-ranging experience, and I think that was accomplished at this year's festival.

Film #1: God Bless America

This was the one film I figured had to show up during the night. Bobcat Goldthwait has carved out such a strong and specific voice in Hollywood these last few years, and it can be quite shocking to people who only know him from the Police Academy movies and such. His last film, World's Greatest Dad, is one of the darkest and most hilarious black comedies of the last decade. With God Bless America he set out to one up that film on the darkness quotient, and he certainly succeeded. The film follows the wonderfully subdued Joel Murray as he goes from being fired from his job to learning he has an inoperable brain tumor. He decides to kill himself, but then glimpses an episode of My Super Sweet 16 in which a spoiled girl throws a fit when she doesn't get the car she wanted for her birthday. Murray decides that the world would be better off without people like her, so he sets across country on a killing spree, killing the people he finds to be ruining the world. Reality stars, fear-mongering political pundits, and people who protest gay soldiers' funerals are all under attack in the film. It has a very dark tone, but it's undeniably funny. The use of violence rivals many major horror films, and it goes places with its violence that even fans of Saw would probably flinch away from.

Goldthwait certainly has a very bitter view on the world; filtered through this film it really seems as though we are circling the drain as a culture. And while there is a certain pleasure in seeing Murray and his teenage sidekick Tara Lynn Barr take out such horrible people, the film never calls them out on their own horribleness. Barr in particular is no better than those she is killing, and we get the sense that while Murray feels like he is doing this so his young daughter will grow up in a better world, Barr seems to have no reason for doing it other than being a sociopath out for blood. It's a comedy, so some of this can be forgiven, but it can't go unnoticed either. The film also has a problem with numerous monologues in which someone goes off on a list of things in the world they hate. It's funny the first time, but it gets old after 90 minutes. A more focused film with a bit more consideration for its own characters shortcomings might have made this a real winner. As it is, though, it's still a very dark and funny film with some truly shocking moments. If you can make it through the opening five minutes, you'll be prepared for the level of madness on display in the rest of the film.

Film #2: Comic-Con Episode IV: A Fan's Hope

After the extreme first film we were given two choices: stay where we are for a "documentary about people who might attend something like the Secret Film Fest" or head next door for a Spanish horror film akin to Rosemary's Baby. I decided that while I had more interest in a horror film, I needed a palette cleanser after what I had just seen. What we got was the latest Morgan Spurlock documentary about Comic-Con. The best thing I can say about it is that it is a pleasantly empty experience. It follows a number of different people as they attend the famous convention, from artists to collectors to average fans to a guy who remembers the days the con attracted only a few hundred visitors. The resulting film is nice enough as a fluff piece, but it gave no insight into either the convention or the people who attend it.

What was frustrating was that there were some potentially great stories to explore, but the film shied away in favor of working as a propaganda piece for the convention. I would have loved to see more of the older gentleman who was frustrated by the way the convention had changed from a comic hangout to just another media stop for Hollywood. He sets up shop with a huge collection of comics he's trying to sell, including an ultra-rare one worth $500,000. He struggles through the event because sales are down every year, and at the same time he is training his protege, a young 20-something woman who is interested in taking over the business when he retires. I would love to have known more about their relationship - how did she get involved in selling comics? What does she see as the future viability of the profession she has chosen when she sees how much her mentor struggles? The film doesn't care, instead cutting away to the story of a man who just has to get the newest Galactus toy by any means necessary. The film suffers from not knowing what it wants to be, and it resorts to interviews with people that range from relevant (Joe Quesada, Stan Lee, Kevin Smith) to people who are simply there to promote their current release (Olivia Wilde, Thomas Jane, Eli Roth). It's all very inoffensive, sure, but it amounts to nothing you didn't already suspect about Comic-Con.

Film #3: Beyond the Black Rainbow

Again we were given a choice: stay in our seats for a Cuban zombie movie (Juan of the Dead) or go next door for a "Futuristic movie in the vein of Kubrick set in 1983." In spite of what I've heard about Juan of the Dead, I decided that the arty picture would be the right one to see at 4:00 in the morning. This being the hour when staying awake starts to get more difficult, I figured something that would really bend my mind would be the perfect next film. While I stick to that belief, I have to admit that Beyond the Black Rainbow is a mess. The story is almost incomprehensible, so the best I can do to describe the experience of seeing it would be thus: imagine a Cronenberg narrative about experimenting on a woman, shot in the esoteric style of Kubrick, set to a John Carpenter score. Take all that, then dip it into a vat of David Lynch at his most impenetrable, and you get this film. While I love all those filmmakers' styles, blended together under the direction of someone who has no real control of the medium resulted in on of the most frustrating films I've ever seen.

Best I can tell, Rainbow is about a man who works at a facility of some sort where they have a psychic woman imprisoned. They use some sort of magical pyramid to control her powers. Where did she come from? I believe that our main character Barry descended into hell to get her, though I'm not sure. The film is very deliberate in its style, featuring many shots that serve no narrative function and character transformations that make no sense (our villain goes from a Christian Bale look alike to a completely bald creep with blank eyes for no discernable reason). From a purely visual and musical standpoint, however, the film is awesome (I would love to get the score, which really is a classic Carpenter synth score at heart). It is a real trip at times, and I suspect those under the influence of something might get a kick out of this, forming their own crazy narratives from the inscrutable pieces on hand. For the rest of us, though, it is a film so impossible to penetrate that the audience couldn't help but laugh at it as it went along, so bizarre did it get.

Film #4: Sound of Noise

After the mess of the last film, I was ready for something a bit more fun. And boy did I get that with Sound of Noise, easily my favorite film of the night. Sound of Noise is a foreign film in which a group of musical anarchists go around town creating impromptu concerts using the items of the location they are in. For example, they hold up a bank so that they can perform a piece that utilizes shredders, stamps, glass, drawers, etc. On their trail is a cop named Amadeus, who grew up in a musically renowned family but wound up loathing music because he is tone-death. It's a very silly film, and it reminded me of something Jean Pierre Jeunet might make if he were feeling particularly whimsical.

Watching this film you'll know pretty quickly if this is for you: our introduction to the two main anarchists is a scene of one of them driving a van while the other sits in the back drumming along to the noises of the car speeding up and slowing down. The sound design of the whole film is simply amazing, blending music and noise together seamlessly. They ways in which every day sounds would turn into music was a delight, which is the whole point of what the musicians are trying to do in the film. Perhaps it was because I was at this point at almost 24 hours without sleep, but I did have some difficulty understanding some aspects of the film. Namely, Amadeus learns that anything used by the musicians to play their songs results in him not being able to hear those items ever again. For example, they use the body of a patient in a hospital for one song and he can't hear the patient during an interview. I never understood the logic behind this, since he could hear music played by any other musician just fine. I'm willing to write this off as sleep depravation on my part, as the rest of the film worked so well and kept me consistently delighted throughout.

Film #5: The Raid: Redemption

At this point in the festival you are probably losing a lot of people to sleep, especially those who weren't ready to read subtitles in Sound of Noise. So it's probably a good idea to program a real pick-me-up film to jolt people awake. That's what we got with The Raid. The Raid is a thesis argument for how far you can take an action film without any significant plot or identifiable characters. We get a basic setup: a power crazy crime lord is housed in a large apartment complex, and a group of police have decided to raid the building and capture him. The police are almost all interchangeable, and the villains are mostly just generic thugs who pop out of doors and attack them in intervals. In short, the only thing to really latch onto in a film like this is the action, so it better deliver. And it sure does. The film mixes gun fights, martial arts matches, knife play, and anything else that might be thrilling. What I especially liked was the combination of editing and cinematography, painting a much more clear picture of the action than we are accustomed to seeing in American action films. There are no shaky cams or quick cuts; we get to see the fights full on, often making you wonder how the actors pulled much of it off without injuring each other.

While the film had its moments of silliness and predictability, it also often undercut those moments with some good shocks. Midway through the film, one of the main villains runs into one of the lead cops. Bad guy pulls a gun, cop pulls a knife. Both know the cop can't win. But then the villain sets his gun down and says that he prefers a real fight to a simple bullet to the cop's head. I groaned at this - we've seen it before in other martial arts movies where the point is action over logic. But then the two fight and it goes in an unexpected and satisfying direction. The ultimate outcome is the only one that could have made that moment work, and it sets up a similar showdown later in which it happens again, with us far more uncertain of how it will play out as a result. The Raid isn't a groundbreaking film, but it sure is a thrilling one. With the attention it has been getting here in America, I hope it is able to influence the style of action films we get in the coming years, as a move away from incomprehensible action towards something more visceral would be a welcome change of pace.

Film #6: Goon

To end a festival like this, it's best to go out in one of two ways: something really epic or something easily digestible. Watching twelve straight hours of films can certainly weigh you down, so you usually want to keep in mind that the audience is not going to be as alert or analytical by the end. Our fest ended with the second option: a simple little comedy called Goon about a hockey player who is terrible at the game but amazing at taking and receiving a beating. It's the film that Happy Gilmore might have been if he hadn't given up on hockey to concentrate on golf. But that's not totally accurate - Happy was a misanthrope, unworthy of any real admiration. In Goon, Seann William Scott gives a smartly nuanced and sad performance as a guy who is really quite dumb, but he knows he's dumb. As the film puts it, he's the kind of guy who regularly has trash blow in his face. He takes no pleasure in beating people up, but he knows he's good at it and he knows that in doing so it gives him a place and purpose in a family that accepts him for who he is. For those who only know him as Stiffler, Scott will be almost revelatory here. He plays the part with such sweetness that you can't help but route for him, regardless of your stance on violence in sports.

Unfortunately the rest of the film isn't quite worthy of the performance Scott gives. It's a pretty standard sports film, and it wastes no time in getting Scott into the sport as quickly as possible. He goes from being a bouncer at a club to a major hockey player in about ten minutes, which is a bit jarring. I would have liked more time getting to know the world he was leaving behind so that we might better understand and appreciate the ways in which he comes to embrace the surrogate family of hockey players he joins. But then if we did spend more time with him early on, we would also have to spend it with his best friend, played by Jay Baruchel. Playing against type, Baruchel is loud, sexist, obnoxious, and the most grating part of the film. It's like the film thinks he is endearing, but instead he is alienating and unfunny. Unfortunately Baruchel wrote and produced Goon, so the film is tone-deaf to how broad his character is in an otherwise fairly grounded story. I think that one more draft of the script with a bit more focus would have resulted in a far better film, but as it is we get a surprisingly sweet film anchored by the best performance in Seann William Scott's career.

So on the whole I had a blast. I felt that the flow of films was perfect, even if some of the individual choices were a little suspect. I never felt like I was watching the same kind of movie twice, which was really important in those early morning hours when sleep could threaten to take control at any moment. If you ever get the chance to attend something like this in the future, I highly recommend it (especially if you have a local art house that plays the kinds of indie fare you like). The Del Mar does this every April, so if you find the time, I would certainly recommend checking it out in 2013. I suspect I'll be there as well.

The Cabin in the Woods

If you were making a horror film, how would you open it? Maybe you'd go the Scream route, with a shocking kill of a major star to get us in the mood. Or perhaps you'd go the Exorcist route, having an archaeological dig discover an ominous sign that a demon has risen. But how about this: Richard Jenkins and Bradley Whitford strolling down a corridor, lunch in hand, discussing baby-proofing cabinet drawers at home? Smash cut to the blood-soaked title! No? Well, that's too bad because it's the pitch-perfect cold open to The Cabin in the Woods, one of the most unusual and delightful entries in the horror genre, full stop. Cabin in the Woods takes a familiar setup, populates it with dynamic characters, and then pulls the rug out from under the characters and the audience - and it keeps doing do every fifteen minutes. Near the end you simply have no idea what you're watching anymore, you only know that you need to see where it's going.

The initial setup is five friends decide to head for the woods to spend a weekend in a cabin. From the outset you know this isn't the typical horror film - the jock is actually a smart sociology major with literary recommendations, the heroine is into a sleazy professor and isn't a virgin, and so on. The film has fun with your expectations for the characters, and undermines those exceptions at every chance. When the characters arrive at the cabin, they start to morph into the stereotypes of your usual horror film, but there is a reason for it that is explained by the other thread in the story. Richard Jenkins and Bradley Whitford are the leaders of a team who appear to be watching and manipulating our heroes. To what end it is not immediately clear, but they seem to be enjoying themselves as they do it. The film progresses into what seems like a typical slasher film with the body count slowly rising, but that other story thread is there and it keeps getting more and more strange. You start to realize there is something far more interesting going on than you initially expected.

To go into further details would spoil what is a truly imaginative take on horror films. I normally don't do spoilers, but in this case I think I need to in order to sufficiently explain why this movie is so spectacular and why I can't stop thinking about what it all means (how often do you get that from a horror film?). Before I get to the spoilers, I want to say that you should see this film with as little advance knowledge as possible. If you're a horror fan, this is an ode to everything you love about the genre, and the final act is the ultimate horror fan's dream come true. The film is often very funny, with most of the laughs coming from the very charming Jenkins and Whitford, who steal the film and make a wonderful pairing. If I have one complaint, it's that there aren't a lot of scares in the film. Normally I'd have a problem with a horror film that isn't scary - Scream proved that you can be both scary and subversive - but Cabin in the Woods achieves something far more interesting than startling us. It has its moments, but the goal of the film is much bigger and more satisfying than just scaring us (and I would argue that part of the point is that you can't really make a scary movie when indulging in what the filmmakers did here). 

So spoilers from here on out. What makes this so great is the way it comments on and analyzes the whole process of making and watching horror films. It does so subtly enough that you never feel like it's rubbing your face in it - it's there for those who want to see it, and for those who don't care you have an awesome orgy of monster violence and horror icons. The film seems to be tackling three different aspects of the horror film: the creators of a horror film (Jenkins and Whitford), the characters of a film (the people in the cabin), and the audience (an underworld of Gods who must be properly appeased lest they ruin the world). The film is all about how to achieve the proper balance between all three parties so that they all come away from a horror film happy. The filmmakers would love to create something truly original and fresh, hence Whitford's constant disappointment over having to settle yet again for zombies instead of just this once getting to use the Merman. The characters want nothing more than to just escape the violence and get away, larger consequences be damned. When stoner Marty learns that he is supposed to be the "Fool" in the story and everyone wants him to die so as to appease the Gods/audience, he refuses to give in, preferring to let the world end than satisfy a bloodlust he doesn't understand. And the audience just wants to see the typical story told right, lest they get mad and smite the whole production. They have no interest in Mermen or the survival of a joke character, they want to see the proper horror tropes done with panache. The film shows us how a balance is achieved in making a horror film, and what happens if the balance goes too far in the wrong directions.

I initially thought that the film might be a little too critical of audiences in their unwillingness to watch something more esoteric than a zombie movie. But at the same time, it's true. I don't think a Merman or a killer unicorn movie would go down well with the masses, no matter how good they are. Audiences like to be surprised, but not too surprised. It's up to the filmmakers, in this case Jenkins and Whitford, to make sure that they come up with the best possible outcome using the recycled pieces they've been given. The fact that none of the characters fit the typical horror film stereotypes means they have to be modified in order to satisfy the viewers. The "Slutty" one isn't slutty at all, so she gets her hair dyed blond and is gassed so as to make her more loose. Jenkins and Whitford do all that they can to make sure we see her topless - even raising the temperature and lighting - because that's what we expect. The "Jock" isn't dumb at all, so they have to dumb him down enough so that he'll suggest that everyone split up, something no one else thinks is a good idea. And I love the fact that across every culture this ritual is going on, and in all those culture their stories end up being just as cliché. The Japanese are doing the umpteenth version of the ghost scaring young girls story, the South Americans appear to be doing a giant monster story, etc. Audiences love their standard stories, and Cabin in the Woods is all about showing us what happens when they don't get that.

Marty, immune to the effects of the various gasses and such that Jenkins and Whitford are using to manipulate the characters, becomes more and more meta as he goes along. He keeps calling out the idea that there are puppeteers pulling the strings, and he is the first to realize they're being watched and recorded. Marty is the example of what happens when your characters become too self-aware: they run the risk of tearing the whole construct apart. Audiences don't like to be aware that they're watching a facsimile. If you constantly pull the audience out of the experience, they lose their investment in the story and characters. It's why a show like Community or Arrested Development will never be a hit - people don't like to constantly be reminded that the characters in the narrative know they're in a narrative. Marty, realizing what is going on, descends into the bowels of the laboratory where the whole show is being run. He and Dana find the button that will release all the other horror creatures and decide to push it, thereby self-destructing the narrative we've been watching. The zombie movie turns into a free-for-all in which we get everything from giant snakes to killer clowns to werewolves to masked killers to, yes, a Merman. It becomes too much for the "directors" to handle, and it ends up destroying them and the story they were trying to tell. Suddenly the Gods that Jenkins and Whitford were trying to appease don't get what they wanted. Marty doesn't die and Dana the "Virgin" is mauled by a werewolf. What was once a story of one girl overcoming a horde of zombies to win in the end has turned into a bloodbath of nonsensical madness in which a stoner decides to damn the world. And the Gods/audience hate it.

It's fascinating that the film ends with the Gods rejecting what they've been given (even though far more people end up dying than the four they were hoping for). They destroy the cabin and everyone still alive, angry and disillusioned. It's a cynical take on the part of Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard, as if they are saying that the inevitable failure of Cabin in the Woods with audiences is because audiences won't accept something that doesn't fit into the typical horror parameters. But let's be honest here, in a world in which The Three Stooges opens better than Cabin in the Woods, I think the two have a right to be dismissive of general audiences. But that isn't the point of the film (just one third of it). The film's whole thesis is that there needs to be a proper balance, a give and take, if you want success. You can make your Merman movie, but don't expect anyone but hard core film nerds to see it. You can let all your characters have happy endings, but then it won't be a proper horror film. You can follow the formula rigidly, but no one will remember your film with any passion once it's gone. A successful filmmaker tries to maneuver the three extremes, creating something surprising and original but still recognizable and identifiable. Cabin in the Woods comes down far in favor of the Merman movie, but it does so knowing that it condemns itself to cult status and small box office. It may not be the successful formula, but for horror fans who feel let down by the swath of mediocre genre fare we've been given for years now, it's a much needed relief.

American Reunion

For better or worse, American Pie is my generation's defining teen movie. It is to the teens of the 90's what the John Hughes movies were to the teens of the 80's. I admit to a certain affection for the original movie's balancing act of raunch and sincerity, and whether that stems from the time in my life when I saw it or from actual quality, I can't really say. American Reunion will largely sink or swim based on your own affection for these characters a decade later. To those who didn't grow up with them, this will likely be a flat and lifeless excursion. If you enjoyed the original and have been wondering these past nine years what ever became of Jim, Stifler, Oz, and everyone else, you'll get your mostly obvious answer here.

Reunion is a film largely devoid of actual plot. Part of what made the original work so well was the simplicity of the story, four friends vowing to lose their virginity by graduation. The problem with the sequels, particularly this one, is that they can't rely on that plot any longer, so they serve as little more than an excuse to get all the characters back together. If you don't like these characters, you will not enjoy this movie. The graduates of East Great Falls class of '99 decide to throw a 3 years too late reunion party, and everyone shows up. Jim and Michelle are married with a kid, but they're having trouble in the bedroom. Oz is an ESPN sports caster and one time reality TV star. Kevin is married and subservient to his doting wife. Finch is still a man of mystery and culture. And Stifler is stuck in a temp job, unable to adjust to adult life. If nothing else, I think this film actually understood its characters very well, presenting their current place in life pretty believably. With maybe the exception of Oz, I believed that this is where these people would end up given who they were in the original.

The film as a whole is mostly one giant nostalgia piece, reflecting on the 90's as a great time and coming across as slightly dissatisfied with where the world has gone in the past 12 years. As Scream 4 proved last year, audiences might not really be ready for 90's nostalgia yet, so I suspect this will come across as trite and superfluous to most. That's the problem with a film like American Reunion: it isn't really appealing to the current teen generation, instead trying to appeal to the teens of the 90's who grew up, got married, and settled down. How many of them really want to revisit the 90's or this franchise now? I suspect that this film's downfall, much like with Scream 4, will be that it throws the current generation under the bus in favor of people in their late 20's and 30's. It directly calls out the teens of today as being vapid and shallow, while only giving minor lip service to the fact that these guys were no better years ago.

The other big problem is that the women of the film are all given nothing to do, or worse, treated as sex maniacs with no other purpose than to get their men off. Perhaps the biggest star of this cast right now is Alyson Hannigan, and yet she has almost nothing to do in this film. She mostly bemoans Jim's lack of attention to her, eventually leaving him to consider what she wants from life. The rest of the women from the original range from being there to serve as reminders to the guys of what matters in their life, to being mere cameos that are only meant to give you a laugh. The one major new female teen character, Kara, is a sex obsessed girl who spends most of her screen time naked and trying to seduce Jim for no other reason than it's funny. The only redeeming female character is Selena, a girl who was apparently an ugly duckling in the original film that blossomed into a smart and sexy adult running a bar in town. She's the only woman who seems to be driven and smart, and not be there solely to serve the male characters (although even she has her moments of that as well). No one would accuse the American Pie series of being progressive in its portrayal of women, but with comedies in recent years being more balanced in their portrayal of women (Bridesmaids), Reunion wishes that comedies could go back to the way things used to be in comedies in 1999.

In spite of the many downfalls, I will admit that I often enjoyed the film. It has some funny moments, and as I mentioned, I appreciated that the film actually understands its core characters and portrays them fairly believably as adults. I liked that Stifler was basically a failure as an adult, unable to deal with life and pretty much devoid of any friends. I liked the revelation that the MILF guys from the original turned out to be gay, their MILF mantra meant to be a cover for their true feelings in a homophobic world. Touches like this made Reunion better than the other sequels in the series. I still don't think we really needed to revisit these characters again, certainly not this soon, but for what it was I often enjoyed myself.