At first glance, The Cabin in the Woods is a story about college students attacked by zombies at a remote cabin. But the 2012 film also layers in tributes to horror classics, genre twists and visual Easter eggs. Written by Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard and directed by Goddard, it draws on films including The Evil Dead, The Shining and Hellraiser.
Dana, Curt, Holden, Jules and Marty head to Curt’s family cabin for a weekend. When Dana reads Latin from an old diary in the basement, zombies attack. Elsewhere, facility workers Sitterson and Hadley manipulate events on behalf of a mysterious organization. The facility’s annual ritual requires the deaths of five familiar slasher archetypes: the virgin, the scholar, the fool, the athlete and the harlot. The sacrifice is meant to keep ancient beings from destroying the world. In the end, Dana refuses to kill her friend Marty and lets the ritual fail.
The opening and cabin echo Funny Games and The Evil Dead
The film’s abrupt title card recalls Michael Haneke’s 1997 horror film Funny Games. There, a striking red title card and a scream interrupt an otherwise ordinary scene. In The Cabin in the Woods, the title appears after a matter-of-fact exchange between facility employees.
The title and remote cabin setting point directly to Sam Raimi’s 1981 film The Evil Dead, which also follows friends facing supernatural violence in the woods. The Latin diary in the basement recalls The Evil Dead’s Necronomicon, while a facility whiteboard uses “Deadites,” the franchise’s term for its undead. Other names on the board include “Hell Lord,” “Zombie Redneck Torture Family,” “Kevin” and “Bride,” likely referring to Hellraiser, The Hills Have Eyes, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and other horror films or stock characters.
A separate written reference to The Evil Dead alludes to one of the series’ best-known scenes, involving a sexually violent attack by trees. Objects in the basement foreshadow the creatures they summon: a conch shell points to a merman; a jewelry box to a dancing creature with a mouth full of teeth; a wedding dress to the Bride; and a puzzle box to the Hell Lord. The old diary calls up the zombies, while a film reel may reference Ringu. An antique fortune-telling machine also resembles Zoltar, the machine from the film Big.
The monster cells mix real-world groups and video-game creatures
The facility’s underground storage area holds more than fictional monsters. A brief shot of people wearing white hoods clearly evokes the Ku Klux Klan. Other cages contain special infected from the Left 4 Dead games, including the Boomer, Witch and Tank. The first game was released in 2008, followed by Left 4 Dead 2 in 2009.
Director Drew Goddard has said the filmmakers planned a Cabin in the Woods-themed downloadable level for Left 4 Dead 2, which would have let players fight inside the film’s world. Delays caused by MGM’s bankruptcy shelved the collaboration. Valve nevertheless agreed to let the film use some of the game’s monsters in the facility’s cages.
Writer Joss Whedon also brought in a creature from his science-fiction series Firefly: a Reaver, a space-dwelling group known for cannibalism, wanders the facility’s corridors. Several of Whedon’s regular collaborators appear in the film. Fran Kranz plays student Marty, Amy Acker is facility technician Wendy, and Tom Lenk plays an intern. Kranz also appeared in Whedon’s Dollhouse; Acker had roles in Angel and Dollhouse, while Lenk was known to viewers as Andrew in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel. All three later appeared in Whedon’s 2013 film Much Ado About Nothing.
The Shining, A Nightmare on Elm Street and horror from around the world
An elevator shaft in the facility fills with blood, recalling the famous image from The Shining in which blood pours out as the elevator doors open. Elsewhere, two girls holding hands evoke the ghostly twins who lure young Danny in the same film. They are among the many creatures held at the facility.
The film presents the sacrifice as a global event, with each location drawing on horror imagery familiar to local audiences. In Japan, a long-haired female ghost recalls Sadako from Ringu and Kayako from Ju-on. Both Japanese horror films were remade in Hollywood in the early 2000s. In a scene set in Buenos Aires, a giant demon-horned ape appears poised to complete the sacrifice, but is killed before it can act. Surveillance footage from Stockholm shows a destroyed village or research station, calling to mind the Antarctic outpost overrun by an alien creature in The Thing.
A new facility employee named Truman may be a reference to The Truman Show. Like Truman, the five young people do not know they are being watched and manipulated. But when Curt rides his motorcycle into the force field and dies, his fate stands in sharp contrast to Truman’s eventual escape. Sigourney Weaver plays the head of the unnamed organization, adding another pointed reference: she played Ellen Ripley in the Alien films, where Ripley repeatedly confronts a corporation willing to put its interests ahead of human life.
The whiteboard and cast add more genre references
At the start of the film, employees say the previous ritual failure took place in 1998 because “the chemistry department” made a mistake. Some fans read this as a possible nod to 1998’s The Faculty. In that film, the seemingly innocent Marybeth turns out to be the killer, while Delilah, who does not fit the conventional final-girl mould, survives. Apart from the antagonist, the five students also do not all die as the ritual would require.
The masked killers bring to mind The Strangers, the 2008 film about three masked intruders who torment a couple for no apparent reason. The similar masked figures in The Cabin in the Woods are also nearly silent. Another creature, Fornicus, is called the “Lord of Bondage and Pain” and resembles Pinhead from Hellraiser. Pinhead leads the Cenobites, and is often associated with the puzzle box known as the Lament Configuration.
Jodelle Ferland plays Patience Buckner. Her earlier credits include Silent Hill, They, The Messengers, Seed, Case 39 and the television adaptation of Carrie; she also played Bree Tanner in The Twilight Saga: Eclipse. Casting her as a zombie girl gives the role another link to her horror-film career.
From its title card and props to its casting and the monsters caught on surveillance cameras, The Cabin in the Woods packs horror references from different eras and countries into a single sacrificial ritual. The setup drives the plot while also poking fun at slasher archetypes and the familiar conventions audiences recognize.