Task 2.1 - Cabin In The Woods Analysis (Horror)

Cabin in the Woods opens up with CGI blood pouring sequence, changing and forming into quiet graphic images of people lying dead, being sacrificed and worshipping Gods through it. Immediately, all these fall true to the conventions of the horror genre and are what it desired from the target audience such as teenagers and early adults. Accompanied by a dark tone of music, it really sets up the tone of any typical horror movie, as the music reaches its peak, the camera cuts to a medium shot of two businessmen talking about family life. This sudden change in atmosphere is canny in a way that it creates a humours transition to set up what these people are doing. Reverse shots from the 2 characters indulge the audience into the conversation as they hint at things going wrong in certain areas of the world. Having a mystery at the opening of a horror movie is very effective as it allows the audience to be engaged into the movie at an early stage and gives them a reason to pay attention to it and want to stay around for the whole movie.

A cheesy dramatic title jumps on screen; this allows the transition of the previous scene to develop into the introduction of the characters. This is very effective as just jumping from the horrific intro to character introductions would feel a little disconnecting, but gradually becoming less serious allows this to become possible. The camera pans up from street level to a window with a woman packing a bag with conventional teenage movie playing in the background, cutting to reverse shots of her engaging in dialogue with another female character. This introduces the very obvious damsel in distresses that will be in the movie. An extended medium shot of a new character, the conventional hero of the movie is introduced but very cleverly instead of just being the typical, tough hero he’s also smart. I feel the effectiveness of this is that the director has introduced and followed typical conventions of the genre, but also breaks them too.