Opening credits. Sometimes, they are awesome and appropriate and set up themes and feelings and tone for the film--I'm thinking North by Northwest, I'm thinking SE7EN, I'm thinking Sleepwalkers, Halloween, any of those Saul Bass style openers... and there are many. I'd like to deal with SE7EN's credits here, because they relate in a way to Paranormal Incidents. There's scratchiness, frames that aren't quite as still as they should be, like the projector is unsteady, there are flashes of creepy imagery that may or may not tie in to the actual content of the film... in SE7EN we get a bit of a behind-the-scenes look at a killer we have not yet been introduced to, and in retrospect we may realize later that we're getting a look at his journals, which show up later. WE also get a good idea of the vibe for the film, that world-os-off-kilter tone that permeates the film...
Paranormal Incident tries this, but doesn't have anything as great as that almost wordless version of Nine Inch Nails' Closer playing. Instead, there's instrumental music that almost contradicts the visuals, which could be on purpose, except that wouldn't fit the tone of the film. It's like the director or whoever put together the titles wanted a creepy vibe, wanted that SE7EN vibe, but didn't quite know how to get it, and just couldn't find his Nine Inch Nails CD (or the money to license one of their songs).
Anyway, sometimes the opening titles work, sometimes they don't. Insidious, which far too many people actually liked, has this discordant and loud stinger-like music to go with its title, like it's going for some classic horror film visual and a jarring audio to, well, get some of that off-kilter vibe also. Except, the film is so lazily put together that the tone never congeals. And, the opening credits seem more like a parody than something as serious as it's supposed to be... Then again, so many people loved that movie and probably totally dug the opening titles. I think that sudden, pseudo-old-fashioned title with accompanying stinger works far better in this year's Cabin in the Woods. Now, this film deserves a review of its own, but the short version is this: while Cabin in the Woods is a horror film, it is not often as scary as its content might seem to require. But, that's kinda on purpose, because Cabin in the Woods IS a parody of a sort, or at least a genre deconstruction. Insidious, on the other hand, is supposed to be taken seriously, is supposed to be a classic in the making, despite Darth Maul's retarded younger brother and all that--go find my Insidious review if you want more on that. The thing is, that stinger title in Cabin in the Woods is so incongruous with what comes before it and what comes after it that it serves as this rather abrupt reminder that what we're watching is NOT real. I mean, we all know the film isn't real, but the fact that it isn't real is part of the point to Cabin in the Woods, arguably...
SPOILERS COMING--Cabin in the Woods is essentially a deconstruction of why we watch horror films, particularly slasher films. Whether or not we the audience are represented merely by the old gods waiting for our sacrifices or perhaps more by the technicians not only leading the victims to their deaths but betting on how it's going to go--well, that's an argument worth having as well. Paranormal Incident gets some of scares in more successfully than Cabin in the Woods, but Cabin in the Woods is not really made for someone new to the genre, needing to be frightened; Cabin in the Woods is made for the veteran audience, the kind of people that populate the edges of the Scream films, knowledgable of the rules of the genre, knowing what's coming and at the same time ecstatic for the moments things twist away from the usual path and completely happy with the moments where eveyrthing happens just as it's happened before and will happen again in the next slasher film (and, yes, it's worth pointing out that the actual plot that gets the characters killed in the film is closer to a supernatural movie like Evil Dead than a straight slasher film, I think it serves the film better in describing it as a slasher because a) it's easier and b) that structure is essentially the same, even if in one you get a methodical killer and in the other you get vengeful spirits or pseudo-zombies... and, that "pseudo" is to separate out the more straight zombies from the likes of Romero's films or even 28 Days Later from the more supernatural ones of the Evil Dead series). Cabin in the Woods is comfort food for people who know what to expect and are comfortable even when cliches are thrown around.
Of course, Cabin in the Woods tears a lot of the cliches apart, makes the stereotypical characters into a part of the story... For those who haven't seen it, the idea is that there are five types of victims for the sacrifice, the jock, the slut, the nerd, the fool and the virgin. These show up (perhaps not exactly) in so many slasher films that they are easily recognizable. But, Cabin in the Woods gives us not screenwriters fitting these characters into a deadly plot but rather other characters turning them into these stereotypes right before our eyes, or at least attempting to. This is already deep into spoiler territory, but I don't want to give everything away.
Cabin in the Woods has the trademark wit of Joss Whedon and a hadnful of good actors for a horror film. This is far more of a "classic" in the making than Insidious (which sucked) or Paranormal Incident (which was pretty good most of the time). The film is intelligent and does serve up a few scares--though, they are comfort scares for we fans of horror films. It's a great deconstruction of the genre/subgenre... now we just need a good reconstructive followup, something new that isn't so-called "torture porn" or mediocre (at best) or bad (at worst) attempts to bring back ghost stories... A recent mediocre example would be The Lady in Black, starring Daniel Radcliffe. Its parts are all pretty good, but the whole just isn't very deep or meaningful, and good ghost stories should have some depth to them, After all, ghost stories are about loss, at least in part, and The Lady in Black is about loss from a couple angles. Insidious would be a bad attempt to bring back ghosts. The Paranormal Activity movies (not to be confused with Paranormal Incident) are good attempts to put something new into ghost stories, with the first one being the most original, the second one probably being the best made, and the third expanding the story into something bigger and weirder... Honestly, when I saw Scream 3 and they said the rule for the third part in a trilogy was that you find some secret from the past that changes the way you look at everything (you know like in the original Star Wars trilogy, learning how Luke and Leia are related to one another and to Darth Vader changes the entire story. And Paranormal Activity 3 does this sort of thing to the series. But, the whold found footage thing is perhaps getting a bit played out, used well now and then... Chronicle made excellent use of the idea, and also made good use of Freudian psychology (which my wife deconstructed far better than I could have, and I should still get her to do a guest review). Insidious, on the other hand, could have used something like a found footage restriction. The conceit would have limited its approach enought that maybe it wouldn't have been so full of itself.
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