I was just going to leave the thread blank for two reasons:

1) Since the film is so in love with cutesy little meta-metacommentary it seemed appropriate because

2) I felt absolutely nothing for this movie,

however that's too subtle, so like Cabin in the Woods itself I will now belabor the point long past anyone's ability to care.

I honestly don't even know where to begin with this. It wasn't offensively bad or anything a la Black Swan, it isn't good-bad like Chopping Mall, it's not just plain old serviceable and therefore solid in its decency like The Omen, and it certainly isn't good. And it's like it was written to preemptively shield itself from criticism.

I could call it formulaic. The defense would be that of course it's formulaic, that's the point of the movie haha they even named the generic slasher archetypes at the end, the formulaicism is part of the joke.

I could call it uninspired. The defense would similarly be that of course it's uninspired, there's a Cube-style room of rooms with all the monsters from everything, it's all deliberately derivative and referential.

I could call it not scary. The defense would again similarly be that this is also intentional, look how it's also billed as a comedy. Nevermind that it's not funny either, because it's also billed as a horror.

The plain and simple of it is that it is formulaic, and this goes for the meta-meta narrative as well. Yes the silly organization's point is to enact the contrived ritual that plays out with horror movie tropes because it's supposed to, that's not whats formulaic about it. It can be argued that every beat up to the descent into the facility is formulaic by design, but once they're through that door that excuse falls flat.

The plain and simple of it is that it is uninspired. One of the technicians remarks early on that they're allowed to cheat to make things play out as needed as much as they want. Later we see that security personnel gunning down the sacrifices meets the requirements—there's no reason not to lead with that and just shoot the whore first. Or to bomb the cabin after shooting the whore. Or literally anything else. The overarching narrative cannot be flimsy because the arguably intentionally shitty internal narrative is wink-wink-shitty to allow room for that larger one. The overall story is just there as an excuse to make 8104 different references (HAHA THE WHITEBOARD TALKS ABOUT THE R*PE TREES FROM EVIL DESD LOL) and give 3 second cameos to creatures from other movies. The facility and organization itself is just a Cube Zero knockoff anyway.

The plain and simple of it is that it is neither scary nor funny. There are no stakes even with the apocalypse on the horizon and then actualizing to end the film. Everyone is boring and sucks. Literally Shaggy from scooby doo as the lead can't go any other way. The humor predates it by several years but it all smacks of that atrocious Rian Johnson Star Wars movie with the yo momma joke; it's quip "comedy" without the quips but the exact same degree of unwarranted and omnipresent self-satisfaction.

This is, however, a lot more negativity than Cabin in the Woods strictly deserves. I don't feel any sort of profound loathing for it or anything, it did nothing to elicit any particular emotion that strong. It's a completely unremarkable hour and a half.

For a movie with such an incredibly promising cover and inexplicably golden critic reviews from the beforetimes when critics evaluated things by metrics other than how much gay s*x a film has in it, the only thing I feel in any notable sense is confusion as to how either of these things happened. That and I want to watch Hellraiser because cenobites are great even if they are bootleg and have 30 seconds of screentime in an utterly mid movie.

★★☆☆☆

!kino your thoughts?

cc @LainkeyKong as requested