Is Cabin in the Woods, Drew Goddard’s 2012 horror-comedy, a movie about the 2020 Democratic Primary? No, don’t be a fucking idiot. On its face, Cabin in the Woods is much more interested in critiquing the horror genre than it is in politics. What are the stereotypes of a certain kind of horror? What do we get out of watching young people suffer? Is slasher horror’s interest in punishing societal transgression a fundamentally conserv– wait, there are those politics again. The truth is, all art is political, both in the way it’s made and in the way we interpret it. These meanings can and do change over time. And having just rewatched Cabin in the Woods, I felt like it had a political resonance for me that it lacked when it came out in 2012.
Cabin in the Woods tells two stories simultaneously. In the first, a group of five college friends get together for a long weekend at… well, a cabin in the woods. There, they encounter some creepy events that give way to full-blown terror after a group of deranged zombies rise from the dead and begin tormenting them. But, as I said, there are two stories. While the kids are tortured, a group of adults watches, manipulating events for maximum… we don’t know, at first. Violence? Titillation? As the movie progresses, however, we learn what’s going on: Gary (Richard Jenkins) and Steve (Bradley Whitford) are leading a human sacrifice. If the kids die, the status quo abides; if they live, well….
“Is society crumbling, Marty?”
One thing that I found striking about the movie in 2020 that I hadn’t noticed in 2012: Gary and Steve are white collar workers. They have houses and kids. I doubt they’re rich, but they’re comfortable. They play pranks with speaker phone on the office dork, and they run a small betting pool with coworkers. They both know that this comfort comes at the expense of someone. Some people have to suffer, and some have to die. It’s not personal, and it’s not malicious. It’s just what needs to happen if they want the status quo to continue.
And they desperately want the status quo to continue. The status quo has been good to them. It paid for their house, and it gave them opportunities. They aren’t sure what precisely would come next, but they do know that their current job wouldn’t exist anymore. They know that some of their exploitation-driven comforts might go away. But there’s enough distance to make that exploitation palatable. They aren’t just stabbing some kids; they’re giving kids choice. A chance. They stacked the deck, but it’s not impossible for one them to survive. If she’s really exceptional, she can make it. They’ll even stop rigging the game for a minute. And it’s not like Gary and Steve are doing the killing. They’re benefiting from it, but at enough distance for the unfairness to be comfortable.
“No, society is binding. It’s filling in the cracks with concrete.”
What struck me most about Cabin in the Woods in 2020, however, was the film’s ending. Marty and Dana don’t want the world to end. They have friends and family back home. And they have benefited from the system! Every year, dozens of young people were dying so they could go to college and get high. This is where most films chicken out. The critique is there, but they don’t want you to feel too bad. So they blunt the criticism, just a little bit.
Cabin in the Woods doesn’t do that. Dana is tempted to kill Marty, because ultimately, she doesn’t know what comes next either. But she doesn’t. And Marty doesn’t offer to nobly sacrifice himself. There’s a reason for that: Marty recognizes that the system, as it is, is inherently unjust. Maybe he wouldn’t have, if he weren’t the one being ground under the system’s wheels. But he is. So he does.
The ending brings to mind two different sci-fi stories from the same time period: Bong Joon-ho’s Snowpiercer and Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games trilogy. In Snowpiercer, the status quo is rejected and we are treated to a potentially catastrophic ending — only to reveal a glimmer of hope. Hunger Games has its protagonist come up to the precipice of real change and then choose to merely change who is running the status quo, and we watch as comfort gives way to horror at her choice. I think it is telling that all three works came out within a few years of the financial crisis.
Cabin in the Woods splits the middle here. Its ending is as apocalyptic as Snowpiercer‘s, but as dour as Hunger Games‘. So why doesn’t it feel bad?
“Society needs to crumble. We’re all just too chicken shit to let it.”
It doesn’t feel bad because, on a basic level, Marty is right. This system of exploitation and sacrifice fucking sucks. It ruined Marty and Dana’s lives, and no one really cared. They were enjoying tequila, titties, gambling — they were having fun. But ultimately, Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard are two rich, successful white guys. It’s telling how much time and energy the movie spends humanizing Gary and Steve; we know considerably more about their personal lives than, say, Curt’s. How much of the film is from their point-of-view. Cabin is, in some ways, about how Whedon and Goddard empathize with the plight of young people, but ultimately fear that any change will be necessarily apocalyptic. They’re not alone in that.
After Bernie Sanders won the New Hampshire primary and seemed poised to win Nevada – largely on the support of young folks and people of color – I saw a lot of incredibly wealthy people on cable news networks freaking out. Chris Matthews suggested that socialists would execute him in Central Park. They imagine a worst-case scenario, some nightmare Red Scare boogeyman, coming and expropriating their private property. And they just don’t understand why people want that. Are they being manipulated? Is it Russia? It’s probably Russia, right?
But it isn’t, or at least, not entirely. Instead, it’s just a lot of young people being asked to give up a little bit more so that rich MSNBC, CNN, and Fox hosts can buy their third home. It’s Cabin in the Woods — folks who feel like they have no hope of a better life under the current system, willing to risk anything for the chance of something better. When you’re in Marty’s situation, why not roll the dice?
The end of the status quo is hard. Even when the status quo is bad, it’s what you know. How do you give up what you know for an uncertain future? That, to me, is the question that seems to dominate politics in the 21st century. The 2020 Democratic Primary in particular is playing out this drama right now. If you’re curious about what might drive people to seek to upend the system in a way that you see as deeply radical, it’s worth looking at how that system treats the people within it, not just the people running it.
What fascinates me about Cabin in the Woods is that it does both at the same time. It sympathizes with the establishment, who are funny family people just doing what they believe is right. But it also understands what the establishment takes from the rest of us. And, crucially, it gets how the establishment ignores and dismisses Marty and Dana. They can’t possibly fight back. They shouldn’t want to fight back. Don’t they know what’s good for them?
That kind of attitude leads to disaster in Cabin in the Woods. It’s also the attitude that dominates the Democratic establishment and mainstream media in 2020. And who says Cabin in the Woods isn’t scary?
