Cinemasterworks: The End of "Cabin in the Woods"

This whole entry is centered on a spoiler, so if you haven't seen "Cabin in the Woods," this is your first and last warning that I'ma ruin the ending for you.

Joss Whedon doesn't compromise. At least, he doesn't like to. He loudly complained when he had to compromise on "Age of Ultron."

So it makes sense that Whedon's "Cabin in the Woods" has a totally uncompromising ending.¹

To summarize this movie, which is VERY hard to summarize: goofy & generic college students- stoner, virgin, jock, etc.- go to a cabin in the woods. Seems like a normal setup for a generic horror movie. But it turns out they're puppets in an ancient sacrificial ritual to appease an elder god. The ritual is being controlled and manipulated every step of the way by professionals in shirts and ties in a control room below the cabin. The film jumps back and forth between the workers' humorous workaday grind and the staged horror at the cabin, where the students slowly realize they're being manipulated and led to the slaughter one by one.

This is all next-level and satirical enough, but something goes wrong- the virgin character fails to die and no one in the control room notices this so, oblivious, they throw an office party for another successful ritual. Without the virgin sacrifice, the ritual is incomplete and the ancient god starts to stir in anger. The virgin- along with her fellow survivor of the cabin's engineered horror- break into the horror-manufacturing facility below the cabin and let all the monsters loose. Pandemonium ensues as the workers and a whole battalion of soldiers are overrun by the onslaught of every creature imaginable.

And if THAT wasn't enough, the virgin survivor and her friend are confronted by the head of the facility- Sigourney Weaver, no less!- who tells them that the virgin girl needs to die or the ancient god will awaken and destroy the world.

The virgin girl's friend has a gun.

So he shoots the virgin to save the world, right?

Wrong.

He shoots the head of the facility.

And the two friends sit and await the end of everything.² This last bit is on YouTube, and it contains this exchange:

"I'm sorry I let you get attacked by a werewolf and ended the world."

"Humanity...it's time to give someone else a chance."

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I've been thinking about this ending since I saw it three years ago and hooted and hollered along with everyone else in the audience as the giant hand came up and dropped the curtain on our world. This is one of the only films I've seen that got an enthusiastic burst of applause at the end when the filmmaker was not in the room.

There's a stirring integrity to the finale and the characters' choices. And let's consider its point: Is it worth sacrificing one for the good of the many?

Whedon's answer: a firm NO.

Any system or world that requires sacrificing innocent people- even ONE innocent person- is evil and deserves destruction. And destruction it gets!

The ending cleverly indicts the audience. Most of us are cowards and would make the easy choice and let one person die to save the world. On the surface, that seems heroic.

But Whedon is uncompromising. He lobs this philosophical bomb right in our lap: Better that EVERYONE should perish than that ONE should die on their behalf.

If you want to overanalyze it,³ it's a rejection of Jesus' sacrifice. Jesus died to save the world, but Whedon argues that this world isn't worth saving if it means someone innocent has to suffer and die for it.

He's a loud and proud atheist, so fair enough.

A cheaper way for this film would be to make every character die.⁴

And technically, yes- they do die. Along with everyone in the world.

But not in a cheap way.

They die to protect us from becoming monsters. Because by sacrificing each other to monsters we become no better than the monsters ourselves.

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1. Yes- Drew Goddard co-wrote and directed the film, but it feels VERY Whedon, so I'm gonna refer to it as Whedon's work.

2. An exaggeratedly mundane, low-key conversation after relentless action and mayhem and before a cataclysm? Very Whedon. Very very.

3. And that's what we're doing here, so why not?

4. Since Whedon LOVES killing his characters and no genre is more ripe for character-killing than horror.

5. Bonus footnote- It's worth noting that the "cabin in the woods" genre has been getting goofed on since "Evil Dead 2," which was really a satire of the first "Evil Dead," the prototypical "cabin in the woods" horror movie. The goofery continues to this day- a few years back, an "Evil Dead" stage musical was produced. I saw a local production of it. Fun stuff. Its theme song is pertinent to our discussion here.

-Phony McFakename

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