Cabin in the woods who is the virgin

Oh, watches They're like phones you wore on your wrist. So when it got dark the street lights came on, and we'd know it's time to go home. Re: Dana is a virgin by troytx Member since November Homework was non-existent. Most mothers were stay at home. I was talking about the 70's. In the summer, I'd leave the house at 6am to play, and my parents wouldn't see me until dinner time, and never even asked where I was.

Re: Dana is a virgin by Matt-fBR. She is not a virgin. Re: Dana is a virgin by sarasama. Member since July The reason the ritual failed was because Marty did not die when he was supposed to earlier. Then they pulled that lever the place started to shake. They assumed the place shook because the old gods were excited but it was because there was no death.

Post deleted This message has been deleted. Then they'd know she was sleeping with a professor. You are sin. I don't think a time line was given, but it had been awhile.

She still has his picture, so it couldn't have been that long of a while. Plus, as The Director said, "We work with what we have. Re: Dana is a virgin by DarleneHamilton.

What we fear, what we consider off-limits or taboo is a window into what we actually value. Even after the first Scream told us the unspoken rules of horror films, few filmmakers have bothered trying to buck the genre conventions. Director Joss Whedon uses standard horror film tropes to hold a mirror. Their livelihoods are in jeopardy. The classic horror story plays out for the first two acts — the kids find the cabin.

They proceed to settle in, go swimming in the lake not quite skinny-dipping yet and then start drinking and getting high. And then of course, they bring along their anti-establishment, pot-smoking conspiracy-theory spouting friend to be the comic relief. But even as the film introduces these familiar roles, it critiques them. But all of these real, well-rounded, multi-layered people must be reduced to Roles for the sake of the PLOT ritual. That rather than be themselves, they act out archetypes.

Not to mention…. The sacrifice gets underway when the students "discover" the trap door. It turns out that any one of the objects in the basement will summon some horrific trope to murder the teens. In fact, the office even has a pool going spoiler alert: the hillbilly zombies win! We want a predictable plot peopled with tired tropes instead of real characters. The mirror is covered by a picture of slaughter… subtle, right? The audience is Holden, watching women disrobe through the 2-way mirror of the cinema screen.

The Cabin in the Woods demonstrates repeatedly that how we consume horror films strays into voyeurism. In the first half of the film, we can't help but root for the campers and feel anger towards the bunker crew. Knowing that someone within the story--someone not monstrous but ordinary and familiar--is orchestrating the kids' gruesome deaths gives those deaths an extra, fresh layer of horror that cuts through the hoariness of the story, and makes the backstage characters' jadedness, and even glee, at their actions seem terribly cruel.

Around the time that Dana and Marty find their way into the bunker, however, we get our missing puzzle piece and learn the reason that they and their friends are being sacrificed. Which turns out to be the reason for every human sacrifice--to appease the gods and prevent the end of the world.

All over the world facilities like the one we've been watching have been reenacting rituals from their cultures, trying to stave off the Old Ones' awakening, but this year all but the American scenario have failed--the fate of the world depends on Marty and Dana dying actually just Marty, since as the Virgin Dana may survive so long as she suffers.

Since we're constantly ahead of the campers in our understanding of their story--first knowing that they are in a horror story scenario, then realizing the reason for that scenario before they do--it's hard not to feel unreasonably angry at Marty and Dana's determination to survive, and at the things they do to achieve that end.

When Dana releases all of the nightmare creatures stored in the bunker a component of the ritual is that each group of campers chooses, through its actions, which monster will hunt them, and there is a wide selection to choose from and sics them on the staff, the result is one of the film's most bloody, and weirdly exhilarating, sequences, as wave after wave of increasingly bizarre monsters are unleashed to deal imaginative deaths to office workers, maintenance personnel, and HR bigwigs.

But knowing what we do, it's also an almost villainous act--Dana's actions not only lead to dozens, perhaps hundreds, of unnecessary deaths, they also hasten the end of the world. There is, yet again, a sense that The Cabin in the Woods is aware of this, and that if only the film had leaned a little bit further into this reading the result might have a much more interesting story. After all, it's almost possible to read the film as Hadley, Sitterson, and Lin's story, a horror narrative of a different but no less compelling type.

The speakerphone scene is played for laughs, but Mordecai's dire warnings of looming disaster are aimed as much at his colleagues as they are at the campers, and they go unheeded. The backstage plot could have been a horror story about hubris, about the arrogance of people whose power over the circumstances of other people's lives has blinded them to their own vulnerability and lack of control.

In broad strokes, this is what happens, but the final act of the film is too brisk, too preoccupied with inventive slaughter, and still too invested in Dana and Marty as protagonists while relegating Hadley, Sitterson, and Lin to comic relief and then canon fodder to work as their story.

Though interesting hints are raised that something more is going on behind the scenes--several near-misses before the true disaster are blamed on orders from upstairs, and someone appears to be sabotaging at least the American scenario and possibly the others as well--and though a few lines towards the end of the film, and Marty and Dana's uncaring nihilism when the purpose of the sacrifice required of them finally sinks in, suggest a theme of inter-generational strife, neither of these ideas are developed.

If The Cabin in the Woods is intended as a story in which the scenario operators are the protagonists and Marty and Dana are the villains, it is a rather shapeless one. And more's the pity, as far as I'm concerned.

There is, quite obviously, a very large component here of blaming The Cabin in the Woods for not being the film I wanted it to be. Goddard and Whedon set out to make a metafictional horror comedy that comments on the genre's tropes by employing them, and in this they succeeded. It should also be said that I might have been more appreciative of this success as its own accomplishment if I were a bigger fan of horror films.

Much as I try to stop myself from chiding them for being short on ambition, though, I can't help but dwell on how much potential lay in their premise--a secret organization dedicated to defending the earth from ancient, evil gods with a menagerie of magical nightmare creatures at their disposal, who lure a bunch of kids to a secluded location to become part of their sacrifice ritual only for the kids to turn the tables, and the aforementioned menagerie of monsters, on them.

Once you know The Cabin in the Woods 's twist it's impossible not to think of the film like this, and to have used this rich vein of story for little more than a metafictional gag seems like a criminal waste. I wanted more time in the facility, more interactions between the campers and the bunker crew, more information about the organization running this show, more questioning of Marty and Dana's choices. Of course, maybe I'm only saying this because "underground facility that is also a wacky, surreal workplace and has become overrun by horrors while a menacing female voice booms on the PA" puts me in mind of Portal , which does a better job of blending humor and menace than The Cabin in the Woods and even feels like a more compelling story.

The Cabin in the Woods is a funny, clever film, but it isn't nearly funny enough, or nearly clever enough, to make up for the loss of that story. Whedon keeps writing stories about people who work for or ally themselves with a larger institution that is at first portrayed as morally ambiguous or even benevolent the Initiative, Wolfram and Hart, the Dollhouse , and who briefly believe they can use the resources of the institution to do good, only to eventually realize that the organization is hopelessly corrupt and must be destroyed.

April 21, AM. Abigail Nussbaum said…. Jack: You've touched on something that I found myself wishing, about five seconds after pressing "post," that I'd written about in this review, which is that one of the reasons I would have liked the film's emphasis to be different and that I keep rewriting it in my head is that just about everything Whedon has been saying about it and his intentions with it makes no sense.

The idea of the backstage as faceless institution in opposition to the kids' individuality is a case in point. Not just because, as you say, the bureaucracy in this story is working to stave off the apocalypse a review I read this morning argues that this is one of the film's key missteps - if the ritual were empty, a tradition being followed without concrete reasons, or if there were some question about whether the old gods still exist, it would be easier to question the bunker crew's decisions , but because Hadly, Sitterson, and Lin are the only characters in the film with unique, non-predictable personalities.

They feel like real people as opposed to the kids' broad types - which are only complicated when they decide that their own, brief lives are worth more than the continued existence of the entire human race.

Another statement by Whedon that I find utterly baffling - and that inclines me to discount The Cabin in the Woods 's metafictional content - is his description of Hadley and Sitterson as stand-ins for Goddard and himself.

It feels, as you point out, like a moment of Whedon's preoccupations - that same mingled guilt at what he is "making" actors and characters do and experience that drove Dollhouse - overwhelming his common sense. Far from being writers, Hadley and Sitterson are technicians, recreating a scenario according to predefined parameters without displaying even an ounce of creativity even the choice of monster is out of their control - because to do otherwise would bring down upon them the wrath of their "audience.

My most substantial complaint about 'Cabin in the Woods' is that if a film is critiquing the way horror filmmakers give their characters signifiers so their audience can absolve themselves of the qualms preventing them from enjoying their grisly deaths, you probably shouldn't give your characters signifiers so your audience can absolve themselves of the qualms preventing them from enjoying their grisly deaths.

Bradley Whitford's character, for example, is slaughtered and it's played as a gag powered by the irony of the accusation that as a victimiser he wanted to see his victims killed in a certain way and now he's being killed in that same way, ha ha. The film isn't against the structures, as structures, that allow us to revel in violence; it's against the structures that allow us to revel in violence against certain people.

So, yeah, when Whedon argues that it's a film about the how people aren't expendable it's hard to take seriously, what with the impaling-by-unicorn. April 21, PM. Josh K-sky said…. I think you're right to say that the film would have been stronger by going deeper into Hadley and Sitterson's horror movie.

I've been enjoying thinking of the ending as a trolley problem -- the exercises in ethical thought that ask whether you should push a fat man onto a trolley track if doing so will kill him but prevent the trolley from killing four others. Instinctively, most respondents will allow the man to fall, but most will refuse to push him.

Also, it's a bit off that it's a fat man. Cabin offers a radically deontological response -- even if the whole world would be saved, you don't push a man off a trolley. But I think you're right -- that's a movie you can tease out, but not one that's given a lot of time on the screen.

Lewis J. I don't know why reviewers keep claiming that this movie needs extra protection against spoilers. The premise to the film has been given away in all the advertising and trailers and the film itself is not concerned about keeping the nature of the cabin's reality a secret. The movie's only twist, which I think is a decent one, is that the seemingly cruel and callous technicians managing the scenario are actually the good guy and Dana and Marty, by fighting so effectively for their own preservation, are the villains.

The morally correct decision at the end was for Dana to kill Marty and complete the ritual and prevent the world from being destroyed. Any action, no matter how otherwise reprehensible, would be excusable if it prevented such an outcome. The problem, as I see it, is that Whedon has a strong nihilist streak. This admittedly is based only on a limited reading for his work Buffy, Serenity, and now Cabin in the Woods.

He appears to view the universe as unceasingly hostile to humanity with no redeeming value within it to justify its continued existence. Humans don't appear to be any better. The administrators in this film are portrayed as corrupt in spite of the fact that they are attempting to save the world.

I'm not sure how the came to this conclusion. As a friend remarked: "What about those Japanese schoolgirls who defeated the evil ghost through the power of friendship? Don't they prove that there is something in us worth preserving? Whedon seems to have stumbled onto the one scenario in which it would be morally excusable to murder five people but hasn't realized it. April 22, AM. Unknown said…. The ones who walk away from Omelas explicitly do so without stopping the sacrifice, though. They don't even stay and lobby peacefully for the end of the sacrifice system.

Le Guin offers no hint of what they would do, or ought to do, if they were the people who had to decide whether or not to sacrifice the child and save or destroy the city for everyone else. The choice to walk away is a choice they make for themselves only. And also they're not walking into certain death-by-Cthulhu, they're just walking out of paradise.

April 22, PM. I don't think you guys understand the point behind this movie. The world the film takes place in is figurative for the horror movie industry.

The Gods which were called the Audience at one point are US The rituals each country is performing is symbolic of the actual movies each country is making.

That's why they made a reference to how US was doing well until ' The movie pointed out how every one of our horror films follows along the same cliche formula every time. No one has any originality.

This movie, in fact, follows along the same cliche horror movie formula, UNTIL, the formula fails when the Pothead doesn't die. Then the movie takes a complete twist because it doesn't go as planned. April 23, AM.

No, I think we all understand what Whedon and Goddard are saying. I Just don't think any of us are convinced by it - I know I'm not. As I say in my comment above, for Whedon to position himself and Goddard as technicians helpless to alter their story's script because the audience are evil, all-powerful gods who will destroy the world if they don't get exactly what they want is pretty insulting, and not a little bit whiney. Especially coming from Whedon, whose career was launched when he bucked the conventions of the horror genre, which won him a devoted audience.

It would have made a lot more sense if this section of the movie were longer — what if the vacationers had acted in ways that were fundamentally different from how a character in a horror movie behaves, and the downstairs staff were forced to respond by making actual creative decisions on the fly that deviated from their original plans? Maybe someone decides to leave early and they have to figure out how to make him or her stay without causing a disturbance big enough to rattle the others.

If only this had been expanded into a battle of wits between the two groups, it would have provided some additional character development and done a better job of exploring the central hook of the film. April 24, AM. Jack: The issue you're getting at isn't due to the film's short running time, but to its very poor dramatisation. The movie's central conflict is between the college kids and the puppeteers, but while this is spelled out early on for the audience, the former remain unaware of the latter until around the elevator sequence, and have therefore nearly no opportunity to show agency in any way that will influence the plot particularly since the puppeteers have been robbing them of their free will , while the puppeteers' actions remain routine, at a remove, and devoid of meaningful decision-making.

When Dana and Marty meet the director and are finally told the stakes of the conflict, their world-ending choice can only seem arbitrary because nothing in the preceeding story, despite all of the violence and mayhem that has taken up screentime, has provided a relevent build-up to it.

The scene where Holden discovers the one-way mirror and faces then quickly resolves an internal dilemma about it holds more dramatic tension than the entire rest of the film's running time, because it's the only point where a character's choices have consequences that affect character development and group dynamics. Dan Hemmens said…. Jack Rogers Whedon's kneejerk anti-authoritarianism is extremely tiresome. It's like he's understood that some systems are unjust but hasn't worked out why that is a bad thing.