#snarkathon – The Cabin in the Woods

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Lorraine: I’m sure most of you are reading this post right now all, “snark-a-what now?” It’s okay. Things around here happen pretty quickly and we’re often starting new things when we can barely keep up with what we already have going on. (So, like, Firefly this Friday. For real.)

#Snarkathon came about thanks to some Traumateers who wanted to live Tweet The Cabin in the Woods, the 2012 Joss Whedon vehicle staring Thor, Topher, Fred, Lena’s new boyfriend in The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2, and a girl IMDB told me played the Yellow Cheetah Ranger. Take this idea, add a Google hangout and voila.

We’ll touch a little more on the #snarkathon thing at the end of the post, but first, The Cabin in the Woods (#spoilerssweetie):

We start the movie at an official looking facility. Amy Acker tells two guys that Stockholm failed so it’s down to Japan and them (the US) to do some important thing we don’t know about yet. The title card pops up suddenly. It’s possible I had a mini-heart attack.

Next, we meet our other main characters: Dana (a sweet looking girl who just got dumped via email), Jules (a pretty girl who objects loudly to books being taken on a vacation) Curt (CHRIS HEMSWORTH OM NOM NOM who throws a football after 1 second of being on screen) and Holden (who is also FOINE.)


The last member of the group rides up and I’ll let you draw your own conclusions about his role:

I think it’s only fair that I say I wouldn’t turn Fran Kranz away from my bed either. This is a good looking cast.

The gang take off. They right away establish that they are beyond the reach of cell towers. It reminds me of that one time that we read a Goosebumps book that could’ve been avoided if someone had a GPS. To get to the cabin, you have to pass through some death tunnel. The cabin itself is your quintessential murder cabin. It’s dark, things creak, and there is a creepsome painting of a cow slaughter in one of the rooms.

The Cabin Crew have fun in the lake while the Murder Masterminds (in the facility where Amy Acker works) bet on assorted evil ways to die. Andrew from Buffy the Vampire Slayer shows up for a few seconds. Because Whedon.

We learn that even though the Murder Masterminds are manipulating the setting, the Cabin Crew are going to be made to choose their own deaths. And with that:


Party in the cabin includes drinking and Truth or Dare. Jules’ dare is to make out with a mounted wolf head. Dana’s dare to to go explore the cellar (of don’t go in there.) They all end up down there and discover that it’s full of creepy nicknacks. Dana calls all of their attention over to a diary. Some of it is written in Latin.


 

I don’t think Whedon’s characters ever learn this lesson, no matter how many times he tries to teach it.

Dana reads the Latin and we watch a family of zombies pull themselves up out of the ground. The Murder Masterminds cheer, though one of them is pissed because he wanted mermen. Alas, we’re left with zombified, pain-worshiping backwoods idiots.

We get a quick cut of a group of school girls in Japan screaming as a ghost appears in their classroom. Worst school day ever.

From this point on, the murdering begins. Jules and Curt go outside for reasons unknown. Dana and Holden flirt. Marty is suspicious of everything but then digresses.

Outside, Jules and Curt make-out and undress. So basically what I’m saying is that 5-6 of us sat around on the Internet and watched the Yellow Cheetah Ranger’s boobs for a minute.

Things don’t progress beyond that because they are attacked by the zombies. Jules’ head is chopped off. The Murder Masterminds pull a lever and we see Jules’ blood being collected.

Meanwhile:


 

And:


 

Curt gets back to the cabin all bloody. He says they need to barricade the house and stick together. That’s too sensible, though, so the Murder Masterminds hit a few buttons and he changes his mind.

we should split up 1we should split up 2we should split up 3

They do indeed split up. Marty is promptly attacked by a zombie. We watch him get knifed in the back and dragged away. His blood is collected.

Dana and Holden are attacked by one of the zombies but Dana stabs the shit out of him. Small detail, but the Murder Masterminds hit a button and the knife Dana holds crackles. She drops it. BECAUSE THEY ALWAYS DROP THE WEAPONS THAT WOULD BE USEFUL.

Dana, Curt and Holden make it back to the Winnebago and drive away. In Japan, the school girls defeat the evil ghost. BEST SCHOOL DAY EVER!

The Murder Masterminds blow up the death tunnel so the Cabin Crew can’t escape in the van. The explosion creates a rift and Curt decides he can clear the jump on his dirt bike. I’m sure he would’ve had it not been for the pesky force field.

Considering he got stabbed in the neck, Curt actually lasted a pretty long time. His blood is collected.

Dana and Holden get back in the van. Mid-pep talk, Holden is stabbed in the neck by a zombie. The van goes into the lake, but Dana escapes and swims to shore, where she is attacked by a zombie. The Murder Masterminds celebrate because apparently, the virgin’s death is optional, as long as she suffers. (We’ve already titled a post “hold onto your virginity, kids,” but you know.)

The celebration is halted when the Murder Masterminds get a call informing them someone is still alive. IT’S MARTY, BITCHES. He makes his triumphant return by saving Dana from the zombie that’s been seriously attacking her for forever. She’s okay though. Don’t even worry.

Eventually, thanks to Marty being a genius, they get to an underground elevator he found and can rewire to take them downstairs. Once in the elevator they get a little show of different evils in boxes much like their own. Each evil corresponds to a nicknack in the cellar.

Dana and Marty finally get to the facility and the entire set-up is explained to them: the Murder Masterminds’s job is to offer sacrifices to placate “the ancient ones.” Marty must die. An army is sent after them, but they lock themselves into a control room that conveniently has a button that releases every evil thing kept in the elevator storage boxes.

Blood bath.

The murder spree goes on and on until even the Murder Masterminds are killed.


Dude, someone gets killed by a unicorn.

Finally, Dana and Marty make it even lower in the facility where Sigourney Weaver (?) shows up to say five young people must always be punished and sacrificed:

⇒ The Cabin in the Woods<br /> This is all most unpleasant. I know you can hear me. I hope you’ll listen. You won’t get out of this complex alive. What I want you to try to understand is that you mustn’t. Your deaths will avert countless others. You’ve seen horrible things: an army of nightmare creatures. And they are real. But they are nothing compared to what lies beneath us. There is a greater good, and for that you must be sacrificed. Forgive us… and let us end it quickly. <br />

Or, you know, the relative virgin.

They have 8  minutes to finish the sacrifice or the world ends. Marty’s all, “WELP. I GUESS THE WORLD’S GONNA END.” Dana isn’t so sure, and points a gun at Marty. He’s saved by the sudden appearance of a werewolf who chomps on Dana. Marty manages to get the gun, shoots the wolf, then wrestles Sigourney Weaver. A final zombie enters the ring and she kills Sigourney Weaver. Marty knocks them both down into the abyss.



And the world does indeed end as we see the arm of an Ancient One bust through the earth and we cut to black.

Kirsti: First off, y’all need to know that I got up at 7am on a Sunday morning for #snarkathon because a) time zones, and b) that’s how much I love you guys. I knew pretty much nothing about this film going into it, other than that it was Whedon-y. It wasn’t the worst thing I’ve ever seen (I’m fairly certain that honour goes to any Adam Sandler movie that’s not The Wedding Singer), and I spent a fair amount of my time focused on Twitter rather than the film itself. Plus, I’m an epic wuss so don’t know enough about horror movie tropes to see which ones they were destroying.

I was NOT expecting Sigourney Weaver to show up, and Chris Hemsworth wins a prize for Most Ridiculous Death Outside of An Episode of Supernatural.  I loved the bloodbath scene, the dancing Murder Masterminds, the “fuck you” to the tiny Japanese schoolgirls, and the death by merman. On the whole, I would rate it fun but confusing. Because, you know, not really paying attention and also tropes I don’t know about.

Sara: All of Kirsti’s favorite parts are all of my favorite parts, too! And you really can’t go wrong with Death by Unicorn. If there’s any way to go, that is my choice. This movie is so wonderful to me, because it’s one of those that takes multiple viewings to fully love. (At least, it did for me.) I liked it the first time, loved it the second time, and thought it was pretty damn genius the third time. I don’t really care for horror movies, either, so this one was great for a person like me. Every time something extra terrifying would happen, we would get a cut to a scientist scene and get to catch our breath or giggle for a minute before getting back to the scares. This movie also might be extra exciting for me, because I convinced my friends to play a drinking game to it a few weeks ago, and we. got. hammered. Either way, this is at the top of my list for favorite scary movie of all time.

Sweeney: This was only my second watching of the movie – my first involved my best friend and her then-fiance giggling at me and another friend as we reacted to all! the! things! and expressed our general confusion for most of the movie. AND SO, it was really fun to be on this side of it. By which I mean, “It was fun to occasionally creepily stare at the Google Hangout screen and watch people watching a movie. Internet people are the best people.

As promised, here’s the part where we get to that whole #snarkathon thing. The original plan was just for everyone to procure their movie snarking aids of choice and watch a movie alone-together via Twitter. So, in addition to the Google Hangout fun times of watching other people watch a movie (which was delightfully awkward in the best way possible) we also had a heaps of fun discussing this movie on Twitter. So here, again, is a short recap, as told through the day’s best tweets:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lor: And of course, we really wanted to have a place where you all could share your Cabin related thoughts. Feel free to do so in the comments.

In the end, the #snarkathon was one half awkward and one half awesome, so clearly we’re all about trying it again. We all joined the Google hangout, counted to three and pressed play on our respective movies. We were watching each other watch a movie while Tweeting. Is that the most Internet-y thing you’ve ever heard or what?

If you’d like to join us for the next round, we’ll be watching I Know Who Killed Me. Join us on January 4th, 2014 at 5:00pm EST, either on the Hangout (the link will be Tweeted out that day), on Twitter, or both!

 

Marines (all posts)

I'm a 30-something south Floridan who loves the beach but cannot swim. Such is my life, full of small contradictions and little trivialities. My main life goals are never to take life too seriously, but to do everything I attempt seriously well. After that, my life goals devolve into things like not wearing pants and eating all of the Zebra Cakes in the world. THE WORLD.






Nicole Sweeney (all posts)

Nicole is the co-captain of Snark Squad and these days she spends most of her time editing podcasts. She spends too much time on Twitter and very occasionally vlogs and blogs. In her day job she's a producer, editor, director, and sometimes host of educational YouTube channels. She loves travel, maps, panda gifs, and semicolons. Writing biographies stresses her out; she crowd sourced this one years ago and has been using a version of it ever since. She would like to thank Twitter for their help.






Sara (all posts)

I'm a 30-something with three kids who spends an embarrassing amount of time watching teen television dramas. There's a whole lot of Internet out there, and I plan on reading all of it before I die.






K (all posts)

I'm a 30-something librarian and I still live with my parents because I'm super broke. Leader of Team Heartless Cow. I have an inexplicable love for 90s television, eat too much chocolate, and read more than is good for me.





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