It’s Monster Month on the Voyage Podcast! So, let’s start things off with a bang. We’re talking “The Cabin in the Woods!” The conversation opens with a brief question over whether it’s appropriate for Christians to watch horror movies. From there it’s a SPOILER filled break down of one of the most creative deconstructions of the horror movie genre ever made. This movie has a lot of gory moments, so it might not be for everyone, but it knows how to put the “fun” in “profundity” when asking big questions about sacrifice and the human condition. “The Cabin in the Woods” is one of the best examples of comedy/horror genre, so check it out and then check out our thoughts on it!
Resources
- What is Postmodernism? – Word on Fire
- Introducing our next Voyage Classics: “Lord of the World”
- Saving Victim: Peeta as a symbol for the Eucharist in The Hunger Games
- Read the latest entry of the Voyage Blog!
Listen to the latest Voyage Podcast
Related Episodes
- Jesus: the Scape-GOAT – part 1 & part 2
- Saving the Whole World and Losing Your Soul – The Last of Us season finale
Transcript
Jacob (00:01.522)
Oh man, I am really excited for what are we calling this Monster Month?
mike (00:02.161)
So.
mike (00:07.162)
I was.
Something like that, yeah. I actually was about to say, I think this is the most we’ve both been mutually excited for a, at least for one episode, in probably a long time. I hope it’s communicated that, yeah, we were both very much looking forward to this conversation.
Jacob (00:18.67)
Ha ha ha.
Jacob (00:26.41)
Oh no, what we’re gonna be talking about today is gonna be a super fun conversation for sure. But I’m just kind of like super into the kind of like month of October and like the fall season and trick or treating and all that stuff. So I am definitely one of those pagan styled cultist types. I mean, just kidding about the pagan stuff. I’m definitely cultic.
mike (00:41.299)
Oh, you’re one of those pagans, huh?
mike (00:52.407)
Yeah.
mike (00:56.059)
You know what’s at least it’s not as cringe. I would take I would take celebrating the paganism in October around Halloween more so than the cringe of reformation around Halloween and October 31st.
Jacob (00:56.31)
But every good classical Christian is, right?
Jacob (01:09.286)
Oh, like the trunker treating and things like that. You know, in fairness, in fairness, most of that quote unquote paganism around Halloween is just commercialized BS, kind of like Valentine’s Day like stuff. It’s just it was made up by like Hallmark. It’s made up by Hallmark. So you’re welcome. All you wiccans out there, go ahead and celebrate those deep capitalist schemes. But
mike (01:12.382)
I don’t know.
mike (01:23.043)
It’s modern paganism, yeah. It’s modern paganism, which is not real.
mike (01:34.007)
Wow. Are you just, you’re asking, you’re begging for someone to put a hex on this show.
Jacob (01:39.39)
I’m kind of curious if there’s any wiccans listening to the show anyway. You’re welcome to be here. We’re going to have a fun time this month.
mike (01:47.095)
Well, with all that in mind, yeah, welcome all of you guys to this episode of the voyage podcast, where again, we’ve kind of we’ve been holding back a little bit. So Jacob has already alluded to where we’re in monster month, we’re doing some we’re doing either a different monster each week, or I think what we’re going to be talking about the monster in the house genre or trope in storytelling and in movies, TV shows, whatever. But this one
Jacob (02:08.301)
Mm-hmm. I’ll be excited for that episode, too.
mike (02:11.812)
This is the trope of tropes or the deconstruction. I think I like the deconstruction destruction of cabin in the woods.
Jacob (02:18.294)
Yeah, you’re a real sucker for deconstructive stuff that’s tainted your soul, Mike. But you know what? This will be the one time that-
mike (02:25.686)
Well, I meant more the alliteration of deconstruction destruction, but yeah.
Jacob (02:29.782)
Oh, I know. Well, I guess that has to make it into the episode title somehow now, huh? Um… Hey, before we get started, you like my mood lighting? For all you people who are actually able to, like, view this? I’m- That’s intentional. The- the kinda like, blacklight mood lighting? Mmm, yeah, spooooooky. Make- look at your own face. Yeah. Ha ha
mike (02:34.799)
Sure does, yeah.
mike (02:44.811)
Ooh, spooky. I was too busy looking at my own picture box. So yeah, it was very much tale of narcissists going on.
Jacob (02:57.066)
Alright man, well let’s get into it. We’re going to be talking about really one of my favorite modern flicks. This thing just like rolled through the horror community when it came out and really blew everyone’s mind. And it was one of those movies where it’s like don’t tell anyone anything about this movie at all. You have to see this movie without knowing anything about it. So that’s my warning to anyone who’s interested. This is Spoilers Alert. We’re going to go into a deep dive on this movie and we’re going to spoil all of it.
mike (03:22.479)
Yeah.
Jacob (03:26.902)
Cabin in the woods go watch this if you want to experience this I Was about to say virginally which actually works because it’s sacrifice themed right so if you want to If you want to have a virgin experience of watching this film Please do so because that’s the best way to see it, but we’re gonna talk all about it
mike (03:29.025)
and I w-
mike (03:39.996)
Uh…
mike (03:49.343)
And I will say too that like any good movie, book, TV show, it’s good independently of the twist ending or the, you know, any spoiler that we’re gonna share. But yeah, it definitely, you know, it’s just a deeper layer of enjoyment for sure. But there is so much that you can enjoy about Cabin in the Woods independent of the big, I guess, twist ending as well. So.
Jacob (04:15.01)
And it’s not so much a twist ending as like a twist story, right? Because like it does have it does have a unexpected ending I would say But it’s actually what makes this film so fun is how it’s holding your hand Like it’s you’re invited to be meta about this movie that be part of like the meta commentary on this movie
mike (04:19.363)
Yeah, that’s, yeah, a twist premise almost.
Um.
mike (04:28.814)
Mm.
Jacob (04:38.166)
From the get go, I mean honestly this thing opens with like a title sequence that has all this imagery of like sacrifice. You know, like something you’d see in textbooks where like, you know, Aztec sacrificing people or different type of pagan culture sacrificing people. And then it immediately cuts to… Yeah, it’s like, it’s like, it’s giving you hints right out the gate. And it doesn’t even take that long. It gives you about 20 minutes of like not knowing what to expect.
mike (04:41.541)
Yeah.
mike (04:49.796)
Mm-hmm.
It’s like it’s showing you, yeah. It’s showing you the ending, but…
Jacob (05:05.086)
And then it gives you about another 20 minutes of like slowly figuring things out. And then I’d say like the last half of the movie is like you’re in it. They’ve given you everything you need to know. And now you just get to enjoy it, play out. And that is just good storytelling. But I’m getting ahead of myself because of how excited I am about this movie. I actually think.
mike (05:09.723)
Mm-hmm.
mike (05:17.709)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
mike (05:24.824)
No, I like calling it instead of a twist ending, a twist premise. So it’s almost like it’s the twist of the twist, because now, like you said, the twist is in the beginning, and you just get to, once it is revealed to you.
Jacob (05:36.658)
It’s almost like Hitchcock said that the fundamental aspect of suspense is showing the audience what they’re supposed to be afraid of. The example he gives is like a bomb underneath a table. So you have a couple or a family at a table eating dinner, right? And if all of a sudden there’s an explosion, that’s not suspenseful. That’s surprising. It’s shocking, but it’s not suspenseful.
mike (05:47.845)
Yeah.
Jacob (06:04.114)
If you keep cutting away to like a ticking clock and you know the bombs are going to blow up, that’s where the suspense comes in. That’s where it’s like, oh man, so like all of his suspense driven movies are fundamentally, you know, he was a master of suspense and that’s why his movies are so fun to watch. Is he actually shows you exactly what you’re supposed to be afraid of and then lets you sweat it out, you know. Gives you knowledge that the actors, the characters in the story don’t have, right? That whole canard. But,
mike (06:04.91)
Mm.
mike (06:24.613)
Yeah.
mike (06:32.527)
Well yeah, no I think… Oh go ahead, sorry.
Jacob (06:36.564)
Well, you should finish what you’re about to say because I’m about to shift gears a little bit to a more of like an introductory conversation.
mike (06:41.715)
Okay. Well, you know, we’ve talked in the past before about actually it was in our, when we were talking about comedy and how it can sometimes be tied to horror movies. And I think what you’re actually kind of touching on is because there’s so much, there’s only dramatic irony in the sense that, you know, the bomb is under the table, but nobody else in the, in the show does. And so it’s almost, it can almost be somewhat funny, even though, like you said, you’re supposed to be, it’s supposed to be tense, supposed to be suspenseful, but
Jacob (07:02.408)
Mm-hmm.
mike (07:10.307)
it just like brings that out of you because you know something the character doesn’t. And there’s so many, yeah, like great scenes. I mean, we’re talking Cabin in the Woods, but in a lot of those horror movies where we get the joke as the audience, even though it’s terrifying.
Jacob (07:26.018)
So here’s the thing, and I was actually pretty involved with this outline this time, folks, you know, just to give you a peek behind the curtain, much like what Cabin in the Woods does the entire time. But I didn’t even include this in the outline. But it occurs to me that we should we should just briefly address this, especially as we continue throughout the month here. You know, there is a awkward, let’s say an awkward relationship.
mike (07:34.353)
soon.
Jacob (07:53.494)
between devout Christians and the horror genre as such. And I think it’s actually worth asking the question, should Christians watch horror movies? Or how do I, someone who as a devout Christian who tries to be pious, justify watching movies that have some kind of ugly stuff in it, let’s say, or could have, I think that’s a
mike (07:59.054)
Mm.
mike (08:06.64)
Okay.
Jacob (08:21.846)
That’s a worthwhile question to ask. And I don’t want this entire episode, I think we could almost do an entire episode on that. You know, honestly, maybe we’ll retroactively go back and do an episode on that or something like that before this one even airs, I don’t know. Because it’s probably a long conversation. But in a nutshell, I would say two things. One, horror movies tend to be the only movies that take evil seriously anymore. Everything else has been completely relativized.
mike (08:24.868)
Mm.
mike (08:30.245)
Yeah.
mike (08:47.611)
Mm-hmm.
Jacob (08:51.01)
And horror movies are the only movies, if you take something like the Conjuring films, for example, they treat Christianity seriously. They treat it respectfully in a way that you won’t see. Yeah, well, it’s supernatural especially, but even like the Conjuring films specifically, those are devout Christian people fighting like the forces of darkness. And the movie doesn’t shy away from that message. But even something like The Exorcist, right? Or a lot of, there’s actually a whole sub genre called Catholic horror, like.
mike (09:00.931)
Yeah. Or just the supernatural.
mike (09:12.56)
Mm-hmm.
Jacob (09:20.166)
Of which the Exorcist is the cornerstone almost but it goes even before Well, not really because it was around before that too. But like There is just definitely Catholic horror. That’s a thing But like the Exorcist is the best it’s kind of like the best example of it, right? That that just treats, you know, there’s a reason why Catholic priests are always the people brought in these horror movies, you know
mike (09:20.967)
Mmm.
mike (09:24.551)
Progenitor or…
mike (09:32.432)
Okay.
Jacob (09:45.362)
So there’s actually this kind of like begrudging respect you find for Christianity in these movies. That’s just point one point two though is They and we’re gonna have a larger part of the conversation talk about why the general population as such Seems drawn to horror movies because the movie cabin in the woods wants to have that conversation Um, so we’ll have it with it. But uh, I would say as a christian What you’re pointing out is that it takes the supernatural seriously?
mike (09:45.403)
Mm.
mike (10:09.071)
Mm.
Jacob (10:15.018)
right? It’s like it’s a genre of fiction, you know, the other one, I guess, being fantasy, right? That treats the world as enchanted, that treats the world as more than meets the eye, more than just like base materialism. So not every horror movie is good for you. There’s no doubt about that. There’s lots of things that are full of like just nasty stuff. But there’s a lot in the
mike (10:24.561)
Mm-hmm.
mike (10:35.696)
Yeah.
Jacob (10:43.874)
much more devout Christian than I have been in the past, that I still enjoy, that still has really deeply meaningful things to say about the human condition. I find stuff, I find elements that reinforce my faith in some of these types of movies that you actually don’t find in other genres. So that’s my brief defense.
mike (11:08.951)
Yeah, well, like you said, if we have succumbed so much to this sort of vapid materialism, and again, not materialism in terms of shopping, but materialism in the material is all that exists, then it’s going to first take a taking seriously of the supernatural before grace can build upon that nature, before you can start looking more seriously at the revealed Christian faith, is you first have to kind of—
reorient yourself to just, like you said, the sacramental worldview or the enchanted worldview of reality. And that is one of those things that, you know, like you said, horror in general, at least is able to do on even some of the more modern fantasy movies have already tried to kind of flatten out the supernatural or flatten out the fairy world too much.
Jacob (11:46.584)
Mm-hmm.
Jacob (12:01.102)
Mm-hmm. Oh Yeah, and you can see you can see that happening even were Where it’s starting to become much more materialistic than it used to and things like that but
mike (12:14.912)
And I think the value of the deconstruction is that when it is aimed at some of those materialistic or materialism-centered movies, it actually is kind of a backhanded way of doing that. And I think Cabin in the Woods is a good example of it’s sort of because it’s a deconstruction, but it is sort of a deconstruction of the sort of like, you know,
world power that’s actually dominating everything, even the stuff that you thought were, you know, like ghosts and fairies, there’s actually something even more behind that, that we get to sort of peel back that layer on.
Jacob (12:49.414)
It does it does get to it. There’s a very interesting nexus between the natural and supernatural at play In the plot line of this movie Uh, and so without further ado, I mean
mike (12:55.834)
Yeah.
mike (13:01.019)
I was going to say, should we just, we just got to say it now, right? We keep alluding to it. So go ahead and give the, uh, yeah. Well, or the, or the movie itself, you want to just give, give the throw of the movie, right? So you have the, the five teens go on this camping trip, the five stereotypical.
Jacob (13:05.722)
Oh, yeah, I mean the actual the big twist like the big the big premise of the flick Yeah, yeah Sure, absolutely Cabin in the woods. Yeah classic go out into the woods right and you got your college aged You know kids Yeah, kind of you’re almost you’re almost incorrect when you say that though, we’ll get to that but like you have five kids they
mike (13:22.119)
The Jock, the Nerd, the Stoner.
mike (13:29.327)
Well, no, I get, but I know that’s what it’s meant to kind of give you that impression.
Jacob (13:35.046)
Not in the beginning though. Not in the beginning, that’s what’s fun about it. Like, it gets there. I mean, you asked me, Mike, you gonna let me tell this tale or not? Yeah. You wanna tell the story? You wanna tell the story, Mike? Uh-huh.
mike (13:43.275)
Oh yeah, that’s right. Like I said, this is the most mutual excitement we’ve had for a topic in a long time. Usually it’s me dragging you along or you dragging me along. So now it’s like, hey, we’re fighting for who gets to go ahead, Jacob.
Jacob (13:59.466)
Yeah, you get to enjoy. All right. So anyway, these kids that go out into the woods, right, they stop at a creepy gas station where there’s a creepy gas station attendant telling them they’re all going to die basically, or they all deserve to die anyway, they move on, they get to the cabin in the woods, and there’s just this, there’s little hints dropping that there’s strangeness going on because there’s a B story in which we keep cutting away.
to these like office drones, like they’re in a laboratory of sorts. They have a command center like NASA or something like that. And we just keep cutting back to them and they have, they just seem to have absolutely nothing to do with these kids going out to the cabin in the woods. And the first, the biggest moment, there’s other hints, but the biggest thing that happens is as they’re driving through this tunnel to get to the cabin in the woods, the camera follows a bird and the bird smashes into some kind of invisible force field, this
mike (14:53.615)
Hmm
Jacob (14:54.558)
driven force field that’s very sudden yeah and that’s the first that’s where like we’ve been seeing these office workers we’re not sure what’s happening but all of a sudden you see this bird smashing to a force field and suddenly it’s like okay yeah what yeah foreshadowing for sure they get to the cabin they you have the stoner type who’s constantly just like you know
mike (14:55.983)
That’s when they start to come together, when the stories come together, yeah.
mike (15:08.059)
talk about foreshadowing.
mike (15:13.119)
That’s okay.
Jacob (15:25.458)
And they are, especially once they get to the cabin, they start to really, really fall into these, like the jock, the nerd, the kind of virginal character, the stoner, and the kind of salacious vixen, right? And that’s when they discover in the basement, there’s a bunch of different like artifacts and antiques and weirdness going on. And they unleash…
family of cannibal zombies that from reading out of a diary it’s got Latin too for all you Catholics right and so it does the power of Latin and the power of Latin but and then as so this is where the actual the actual meat of the story though is that it’s been masterfully pacefully revealed
mike (16:00.151)
in Latin. See? See, it takes the yeah, it takes it seriously. The power of Latin is included.
mike (16:10.037)
I’m sorry.
Jacob (16:22.002)
that these kids have been brought there through pulled strings by this underground cabal of bureaucrats who are going to feed them up to these monsters as a kind of sacrifice to the elder gods. And if they don’t do this, the elder gods will rise up and destroy the world.
mike (16:40.164)
Mm.
mike (16:44.037)
in.
Jacob (16:46.378)
periodically and they have stations all over the planet there’s one in Japan anywhere where like horror movies come from especially if you’re like into the horror community there’s like kind of like bastions of like where horror comes from that has like you know kind of like little hot spots Japan’s an obvious one but even places like Norway have like a nice little following and things like that and so basically the premise of the movie is that horror movies are more
mike (16:53.445)
Yeah.
mike (17:06.843)
Hmm.
Jacob (17:15.65)
just the recorded efforts of sacrificing humans to these elder gods in order to satiate them so that the world keeps living. It’s a sacrificial system. The elder gods quote unquote. Yeah, exactly. And then the rest of the movie is them slowly figuring out. The kids are picked off one by one.
mike (17:21.943)
Yeah. It’s like it’s deep in our subconscious. It’s so much a part of our subconscious that it comes forward in these movies. Yeah. It’s…
Jacob (17:40.342)
but the remaining survivors do slowly figure out that they’re pawns in a weird game they don’t understand.
mike (17:46.611)
And there are rules that were broken, and that’s what sort of leads to the later conflict in the story too. The rules in terms of the sacrifice.
Jacob (17:53.874)
Yeah, and the end of this movie, I mean, you know, at some point, I don’t know, maybe we’ll keep that as a spoiler, at least for now, how this movie ends. But I guess, I don’t know, we’ll end up getting into it in the conversation, I’m sure. That’s the basic premise. It becomes, yeah, it basically becomes these sacrificial victims trying to survive the monsters that have been sent to kill them. And
mike (18:07.544)
Yeah.
We might end up, yeah, if it comes up organically, yeah.
Jacob (18:21.742)
kind of like thwart the efforts of this organization that’s trying to offer the sacrifice. Even though, and this is the kind of like moralistic quandary, to a great extent the movie treats the bureaucrats very sympathetically. And so you have this classic trolley problem type thing where it’s like, you know, is this
mike (18:28.485)
Yeah.
mike (18:38.307)
Mm.
mike (18:43.323)
Yeah.
Jacob (18:50.654)
or virtue ethics of just doing the right thing and not falling into evil.
mike (18:55.567)
What’s so compelling about this too, and I applaud the movie for actually doing this, so the story for doing this, is usually when that dilemma is brought up, it’s usually like an arbitrary, like, well, just because I’m the one in power and I’m deciding who’s gonna live and who dies. But what we find out is that there’s actually a deeper reality to this sacrifice. It’s not just because, like you said, a bunch of suits in a corporate room said so, but that they’re actually recognizing something real behind it.
when it comes to the value or the power of, in this case, the sacrifice of these five kids. And so that’s what actually resonates with me a little bit too, is that it takes that part of it seriously too, which I thought added another level, another layer to it.
Jacob (19:30.314)
Well, you know, this is…
Jacob (19:39.926)
Well, and here’s the thing. This is a very, very funny movie, right? This movie is hilarious. And a lot of the funny, a lot of the humor comes from the bureaucrats in the basement. They’re very humorous. He’s the best, he’s the best. And now he does, but so does, oh, I can’t think of his coworker. The other guy, he’s in movies too. He’s really good in everything he does too. They are a great pair together.
mike (19:44.59)
Mm.
mike (19:52.139)
Yeah, for sure. Bradley Whitford has good comedic chops, yeah.
mike (20:02.423)
Yeah, the other guy, I can’t remember his name either, but.
mike (20:07.163)
Hmm. Yeah.
Jacob (20:08.706)
They work really well off each other. But, you know, so they’re always cracking jokes. They’re very smart, Alec. They’re having they’re making they’re making the most out of like a terrible job, frankly, because what the movie does wisely do is show them get real, real somber when the deaths actually occur. Right. And so what could have been like this dehumanizing look at, you know,
mike (20:29.511)
Mm.
Jacob (20:36.558)
the, you know, whatever, just these, these people who like, yeah, like, yeah, evil bad guys in the basement, like orchestrating things, it really humanizes them. They’re just trying to do their job. I actually watched a behind the scenes thing where Drew Goddard, the guy who directed and it’s kind of like, yeah, Joss Whedon helped him produced it. Yeah. It was kind of Drew Goddard’s baby. He
mike (20:40.751)
Like they’re just another evil bad guy.
mike (20:45.799)
They’re just guys doing their job.
mike (20:56.175)
with Joss Whedon who wrote it, yeah.
Jacob (21:03.394)
based all of this, the downstairs laboratory thing, off of, I’m pretty sure this is accurate. His dad worked at Los Alamo back in the Cold War days. And so he remembers going to like bring your kid to work day or whatever company picnics or whatever, right? And just like seeing this kind of like laboratory where like the nuclear bombs are, you know, developed and like the world ending reality of that. And it’s just like humans.
mike (21:14.262)
Oh, okay.
mike (21:21.758)
Mm.
Jacob (21:30.878)
It’s just these people just going about, you know, just making jokes, talking at the water cooler, just acting like normal people. But everything they do is like ultimately destructive and capable of destroying the entire planet. Right. And it’s like moral quandary unto itself.
mike (21:46.212)
Well, you know, that goes back to our cosmic or our comic episode where it’s like our comedy episode where the disparate nature, how different those things are, you just have to laugh, right?
Jacob (22:00.098)
Mm-hmm. Well, and you know, they said this line in the movie where it’s like they’re just letting off steam because basically the movie keeps telling you that these people are wholly aware of like What they’re doing, but they feel like they have no choice but to do it. And so in order to cope they have to distance themselves from the character the Sacrificial victims and treat it like a game. Yeah treat it like a game
mike (22:25.815)
make an office pool. Yeah.
Jacob (22:28.63)
You know, it’s the only way that they can kind of sleep at night kind of thing. And, you know, take that or leave it, you know, like it’s, this is why ultimately Christians are more of the virtue ethics kind of people, right? Because that’s probably not the right way to do this in the movie. Yeah. Right. Um, and so, uh, anyway, uh, I’ve actually totally derailed myself. I’m going to have to pull up the outline and see like where we’re actually going here. I do know.
mike (22:32.728)
Mm-hmm.
mike (22:41.039)
then they can sleep at night. Yeah.
mike (22:53.939)
Oh, you don’t have it right in front of you? Yeah, so no. Well, and you were telling the story and we kind of talked through a little bit of the stuff behind it. We’re gonna go into sacrifice and you were saying how these are how the people who, it’s almost like these are the temple priests and how do they cope with their participation in what they see as, you know, in one sense, it’s the justice of it, but also the.
how they cope with what they see as the justice, but also the sort of injustice with what they’re doing too.
Jacob (23:23.822)
Absolutely. You know, the nature… okay, no. I’m going to pivot. I’m going to pivot because I don’t know where I was going with that train of thought. When we do this, I’m going to try something right now, because this is going to have to get edited. We’re going to have to edit out that bell anyway.
mike (23:50.295)
I re-said the thing that I said, but yeah, it’s gonna ring in a couple, like, two and a half minutes, too.
Jacob (23:55.13)
When you when that re-rings again say what you said again, here’s the problem when I try to edit these videos together um our faces have to be The stiller they are the easier it is to edit right? Like you see less of the morph if we’re not in like a weird position or whatever when I have to cut it Unfortunately, we don’t know Yeah, um
mike (23:59.108)
Yeah.
mike (24:17.671)
I can’t remember what I said.
Jacob (24:23.582)
I’ll probably end up just having to like, you know, cut where I can on this. But that’s okay. I want to kind of get back on track with the outline anyway because through me basically I’m kind of all over the map here. We can just start with like going through like the script again and bringing, going into more detail about them showing up at the gas station and all that and how the kids turn into a caricature.
mike (24:49.287)
Okay.
mike (24:57.399)
I mean, if you want to start, like, I could just… If you want us to get started, and then if the bell rings, it’ll just be on my side, so then you can… You don’t have to worry about… the sound. So… So go ahead.
Jacob (25:06.174)
Yeah, I like that.
I’m going to just do a quick adaption to this outline though.
Jacob (25:18.562)
We’re gonna go back to, because we’re naturally talking about like the lab jockeys right now. We’re just gonna keep talking about them. Then we’re gonna get into the like how Cabin in the Woods talks about sacrifice and like what that looks like. And that’ll bring us back around to why people watch horror movies to begin with. All right. Uh, ba-ba-ba.
Jacob (25:39.178)
Sorry, I’m almost there.
Jacob (25:47.382)
So that’s the thing about this movie is that it takes this really over the top idea of like, you know, people in a basement controlling situations to like feed elder gods sacrifices and it humanizes it, right? I think that most people would argue that the characterization of the basements is probably the highlights of the film. It’s certainly the thing that makes it feel
mike (25:55.417)
Yeah.
mike (26:03.621)
Mm-hmm.
Jacob (26:14.902)
the most unique because if everything about the movie just took place upstairs, right, you can make a funny in fact there is one it’s called Evil Dead 2 and it’s about people stuck in a cabin in the woods and it’s the big inspiration for the setting of this movie and it’s a comedic film it’s a comedic horror movie. But then, you know, what differentiates cabin from the woods from that largely is just this juxtaposition of these, you know,
mike (26:27.906)
Okay.
Jacob (26:43.638)
really interesting to, well I guess I’ll just say speaks to me, is that you kind of have this sense that the movie is drawing attention to the fact that we are controlled by forces outside of ourselves without like realizing it right? And you can look at those people in the basement as kind of a surrogate for like the principalities and the powers that we’re waging war against, right? Like as Christians.
mike (26:58.415)
Yeah.
mike (27:11.331)
Well, and they are supposed to be archetypes, right? And we kind of talked about that a little bit already, where they’re supposed to be archetypes that, in a sense, are encompassing not literally all of humanity, but you could be reductionistic and say that, yeah, all of humanity is in this cabin right now, either under the guise of…
Jacob (27:23.5)
Oh sure.
Jacob (27:27.934)
Yeah, if you wanted to, absolutely. Yeah. If you wanted to just be like super reductive about it, you basically have your jocks. You basically have your nerds. You basically have your vixens and you have your fools. Yeah, you know, and your virgins, right? Like it’s true how, you know, horror, the reason why this is a comment in this Cabin in the Woods movie is because horror movies always innately did that.
mike (27:37.647)
You’re fools, you’re, yeah. And virgins.
Jacob (27:55.162)
It’s very, very common to see these types of archetypes in the kids that show up in these types of movies. And how humorous is it that, like, everyone’s just kind of like, yeah, that makes like, it feels natural to us, because I think we all see the truth of that, right? Stereotypes kind of exist for a reason, you know? And, but the idea, what’s really interesting about this movie and goes into the idea that these are, these kids are being pushed, right?
mike (27:56.005)
Yeah.
mike (28:02.468)
Mm-hmm.
mike (28:12.344)
Um…
Jacob (28:22.958)
Is that they actually go to some length to? Muddy the waters of these stereotypes in the beginning So when you have Chris Hemsworth, which he made this movie before he became Thor, but it released after he was Thor So he’s like a no. Yeah, he’s like yeah, it’s his best movie, right? He was like a no-name actor when he actually made this movie though. They had no idea They had the future Chris Hemsworth on their hands but anyway
mike (28:31.971)
Mm.
mike (28:36.271)
I was going to say, Thor’s greatest movie.
mike (28:46.323)
Mm.
Yeah.
Jacob (28:52.35)
He shows up and obviously he looks like a jock, right? But the very first scene you have with him is him being all like, oh no, you should check out this textbook. This is like really good. And he says like a bunch of like really, really intelligent, smart things. And the movie basically lays out for you that this guy has a lot going on upstairs. He’s a really, really intelligent guy. And then the entire rest of the movie, he just starts acting like a dumb jock, like more and more and more. He’s becoming more and more dumb jocky as the movie goes on.
mike (29:05.626)
Yeah.
mike (29:19.129)
Yeah.
Jacob (29:19.922)
And it’s because the people downstairs are actually using chemical means and like all these different tricks and stuff they have in order to actually chemically influence these kids to behave in a certain way. Right. The other guy, like when there’s a scene where Chris Hemsworth, he throws a football, it accidentally goes out the window and the kid who becomes the nerd in the movie, he does this big catch in the air and he grabs the, he’s clearly a football player. Right.
mike (29:33.67)
Mm-hmm.
mike (29:49.219)
Yeah, they say like best hands in the school or something like that.
Jacob (29:49.802)
But yeah, he’s clearly the jock, and yet just by happenstance basically, he gets turned into the nerd. He starts wearing glasses, like, you know, all of a sudden, and he’s like, oh, I speak Latin. You know, like, they start making them get all these nerdy, like, realities going on, you know? But these are all things that are happening, that are being influenced by forces outside of them to turn them into things that are not necessarily according to their nature.
mike (30:00.287)
Mm.
Jacob (30:19.67)
right? And so everything about the downstairs, you know, situation, as much as I talked about how much I enjoy it and how humanizing the movie is with these people, if you step back and start looking at it from a Christian philosophical perspective, you can look at them as basically stand ins for like the demonic powers that are constantly shaping us in ways we can’t perceive, right?
mike (30:20.474)
Mm-hmm.
mike (30:45.379)
Well, and it also reminds me of the, what you’ll sometimes find in a lot of these um, ancient cultures where they had human sacrifice is that there would be a lot of, um, either hallucinogenic or pharmacological, like influence on the, on the victims of the sacrifice. And you could say that was done to placate them, or you could say that was done as part of the, you know, that’s what gives authenticity to the ritual or whatever. But it’s interesting that we have this sort of modern spin.
Jacob (30:59.618)
Mm-hmm.
Jacob (31:04.01)
Yeah, very interesting.
mike (31:15.167)
on Cabin in the Woods where it’s almost like you said, they’re giving them these pheromones or these, you know, whatever they’re, however they’re influencing them because they’re going to be the victims.
Jacob (31:23.514)
They put chemicals in the hair dye. One of the chicks blondes her hair before the start of the movie. And it’s revealed later on that they put chemicals in the hair dye to make her stupid so that she acts like a dumb blonde instead of being as intelligent as she actually is. There’s this great moment, there’s this great funny moment where they’re walking through and it’s like, we gotta stick together. That’s the only way we’re getting out of this. And all of a sudden, the people downstairs push a button and a mist sprays Chris Hemsworth.
mike (31:28.816)
Yeah.
mike (31:35.364)
Mm.
Yeah.
mike (31:52.644)
Yep.
Jacob (31:52.95)
And he’s like, he kind of like shakes his head a little bit and gets a little woozy and goes, no, we got to split up. We got to split up. We can cover more ground that way. And the stoner, and the stoner is not affected by anything because he’s been smoking pot. And for whatever reason, that pot is preventing him from being influenced. He gives the audience reaction of, really? It’s like, the.
mike (31:58.255)
Hey gang, let’s split up.
mike (32:07.576)
Yeah.
mike (32:15.204)
Yeah.
Jacob (32:18.126)
You know, it’s the stoner is the audience surrogate in this movie. He’s the one
mike (32:22.211)
Well, and he’s the fool, which is, because again, in the storytelling structure, it’s the fool that is the one that actually gives the wisdom, right? In any like mythology or, yeah.
Jacob (32:25.92)
It is ironic, yeah.
Jacob (32:30.258)
Yeah, he’s the truth teller. He’s the truth teller. He’s the court jester. Yep in the context of this flick And You know we’ll get into I do eventually want to get into commentary about like some of the like The philosophy that the stoner guy is espousing throughout this movie but I think for now it’s just suffices to say that like he is Interestingly enough. It’s the it’s the party dude the fool that’s um
is the audience surrogate, right? So in and of itself, it’s kind of a comment on the audience because what this movie, more so than anything, this movie isn’t a deconstruction of horror movies. It’s a deconstruction of people who watch horror movies. And the joke is on me. The joke, it’s like Oprah. It’s like you get a deconstruction. You get a deconstruction, right? This is a movie about
mike (33:14.169)
So the joke’s on you Jacob. The joke has been on you the entire time
Jacob (33:27.538)
internally right but actually at the meta-textual level where it’s a commentary about like why people watch horror movies and you know if you watch you know documentaries about you know why we watch horror movies and things like that it’s always kind of like the same the same you know basic things are always kind of talked about you know kind of
mike (33:31.376)
Mm-hmm.
mike (33:47.271)
It’s a facsimile of the danger that our ancestors experienced when they had to, you know, go out into the unknown and stuff. Right? Or face the unknown.
Jacob (33:53.958)
Yeah, you know, well, and it’s like people, a lot of this is going to be kind of like, it would be like memetic, basically, you know, because it’s discussing. No, it is. And it’s the horror movies we sacrifice, we watch, we want to, it’s almost like gladiator games, right? The main consensus that you get from a lot of types is that
mike (34:06.111)
Well, you got scapegoats in there, yeah.
Jacob (34:19.018)
We watch these horror movies because we have like a blood lust inside of us and we want to satiate it. And this is a safe way of doing it. Or we want to surrogate for our own fears. And this is a safe way to watch other people be scared and help us acclimate to like the view of being scared. You know, from the safety of a movie theater or our own homes or something like that, you know.
mike (34:41.371)
And I like the thing you have about it, that it has to be the youth, it has to be the young, because that’s what, you know, us as observers, you know, those are our, like, those are the victims in a sense, right?
Jacob (34:52.43)
Well, she says that. Sigourney Weaver shows up in this movie, right, which is a great little like reference to people who like horror fans or whatever. Sigourney Weaver is the director of this facility. And basically when at the end of the film, she comes down, she has to step in and try to like get things back on track to sacrifice these kids. And, you know, the kids are like, why are you doing this? And, you know, why us or whatever?
And she uses that language. She says, because you’re young. Because you’re young. She’s.
mike (35:25.92)
But that makes it more of a sacrifice, right? It makes it more valuable, because now it’s all of the, all that potential, all those years that are being given over to these, what, these hungry gods, you could say.
Jacob (35:33.259)
Mm-hmm.
Jacob (35:38.482)
Absolutely. Well, and it’s like where the elderly are revenging themselves on the frivolity of the youth, right? Or the jealousy of the youth. You know, this is really Girardian stuff, you know, that’s very explicit in the script of the movie. There’s other reasons given for, you know, when you ask conversations about watching horror movies and, you know, what’s very interesting from a Christian perspective.
is that these tend to be like morality tales. This has long been commented on in the horror community that basically the sinners get punished. Especially if you look at stuff from like the 70s and 80s and things like that, or at least the kind of like popcorn, unsophisticated. Yeah, you know, it’s always the people who are doing bad things, participating in premarital sex.
mike (36:09.861)
Mm.
mike (36:17.114)
Yeah.
mike (36:23.867)
The campy horror movie, like Sleepaway Camp, yeah, sort of.
Jacob (36:33.806)
intoxicating themselves unnecessarily. These are the people who are getting punished and it’s always the virginal serious girl, usually a final girl, right? It’s almost always a final girl in these stereotypical movies that survives, right? And so there’s this implicit morality at play at the heart of these movies that speaks to…
mike (36:46.992)
Mm.
Jacob (36:59.706)
I would say probably an older tradition because I think nowadays you get a lot of people, I don’t think movies are necessarily like holding to those standards anymore, but I do think that it’s a really good example of like how Christianity, Christian morality still was influencing even things like horror movies back in the 60s, 70s and 80s, you know, 90s and things like that.
mike (37:10.852)
Mm.
mike (37:23.567)
Well, I’m just kind of curious about it because, yeah, they’re explicit in the movie where the last girl, the last, you know, virginal trope character, it doesn’t matter whether she lives or dies, she just has to suffer, right? And in a sense, that is the last sacrifice, is her suffering from the deaths of all of her friends. And they also make a point that the horror character that Sigourney Reever refers to the first girl.
Jacob (37:37.067)
Yeah.
mike (37:51.799)
She has to go first because she was impure. And so, it’s getting, again, it’s all this language of sacrifice. What’s interesting is that, you know, in a sense, if from our Christian standpoint or whether you go back into the Old Testament, it was the pure sacrifice that was the one that was offered up to God. And so, in a sense, it should be, you know, in this movie, it should be the, yeah, like you’re giving the first fruits, the best of the stuff over to God. And—
Jacob (37:54.996)
Mm-hmm.
Jacob (38:12.499)
We’re separating the wheat from the chaff. Yeah, we’re she’s the
Jacob (38:20.558)
Mm-hmm.
mike (38:21.419)
What’s interesting is that, yeah, like the best of the five in these five, you know, characters, she was the one who her death was the least important, right? Hers is the one that, you know, she can live as long as she’s… And so it’s one of those where there’s an even deeper sacrifice when it comes to the… this character not only giving of her happiness over, right? Is that the thing that’s actually being consumed by these gods? But then her having to go on and live with it, too.
Jacob (38:51.45)
Mm-hmm. Yeah for sure You know watching people suffer is a thing that also gets like discussed here in the sense that it’s like this goes back to Like medieval passion plays, you know, this goes back to gladiatorial games Like I brought up earlier like this is there’s something about a community coming together to watch people suffer
America’s Funniest Home Videos, right? Like from our comedy from our comedy episode, you know
mike (39:21.863)
I was gonna say, this is sliding eerily too close to our comedy episode, which is making me uncomfortable. But yeah. No, but it’s so, I mean, that’s such a cool like…
Jacob (39:31.799)
Well, there’s like when you watch someone stub their toe, when you watch someone stub their toe, your first instinct is to kind of laugh, right? You feel bad for them. You don’t want them to see you laughing at them. But we all have this kind of gut reaction to kind of giggle at people being hurt, right? And it comes from a place of empathy, right? It comes from a place of like, you know, shared humanity. But this is also this Gerardi and kind of scapegoating type thing going on here, you know.
mike (39:42.18)
Mm-hmm.
Jacob (39:56.574)
And so you have all these like, if you go back to like the passion plays of medieval times, whatever, where like you’re seeing these morality plays where like evil doers get punished, right? You know, I guess all I’m trying to say is, is that horror movies and what you see kind of the victimization of characters is not a modern invention by any stretch the imagination. Like Christians in the deepest Christian period of all time, you know, medieval Europe.
mike (40:19.249)
Mm.
Jacob (40:25.386)
right? Like, 600 years ago, you still had this phenomenon of like kind of salacious body, you know, festivals, and kind of this kind of scapegoaty like watching of like the sinner get killed in like violent ways kind of thing, right?
mike (40:42.919)
Well, I said it jokingly, but I mean, yeah, it’s too deep in our subconscious. It’s going to come out, right? Whether it comes out in these like more almost like neo, like modern neo-Pagan iterations, like Cabin the Woods ends up being or in our, like you said, the deepest, the heart of Christendom. It’s still going to come out in some fashion, whether it has, you know, the trappings of Christianity or the trappings of the 1970s horror movie on it.
Jacob (41:10.53)
Mm-hmm. Well, and you know, let’s talk about because the movie Says this is all done to slake the thirst of these elder gods, right? And this is almost like HP Lovecraft Cthulhu like mysterious elder gods type thing It’s very love crafty if you know anything about that stuff, but like I think obviously Because what the movie wants to talk about is how like we are We are the elder gods
mike (41:36.655)
We’re the gods. Yeah, we’re the elder gods.
Jacob (41:38.078)
We are the elder gods demanding the sacrifice of these people. The there’s a scene earlier in the film because there’s also another audience surrogate. He’s a new guy. He’s a security guard who is there watching all this for the very first time. Right. And so a lot of the movie commentary comes from the conversations between this dude who’s watching this happen and he’s disgusted by it because he he’s not he’s new and it’s all just shocking to him.
mike (41:42.365)
Mm.
Jacob (42:07.01)
And the bureaucrat types, the lab jockeys needing to explain, you know, oh, well, this is why, this is why. But he’s, you know, so they’re, they’re killing these people maliciously with like zombie cannibals, right? And he’s like, why, why does it have to be that? Or no, at this point, they’re trying to get the blonde chick to take her top off. Right. Um, and he’s like, you know, why degrade her like that? Why are you objectifying her like that? And they say.
mike (42:29.085)
Mm.
Jacob (42:36.214)
It’s not for us, man. We’re not the only ones watching this. It’s for them. And he’s talking, in the context of the movie, they’re talking about the elder gods, but he’s talking about the audience. So the movie is like, the movie’s like, why are you objectifying this woman? And the movie goes on and says, because the audience demands it. Because the movie, because you, it points, yeah, it points a finger right at the audience is because you wanted to grade this chick. Because you want this.
mike (42:40.429)
Mm-hmm.
mike (42:45.699)
Yeah.
mike (42:55.275)
I wish he had looked right at the camera when he said it. Yeah. If they had some way to have him look directly at the camera as if it was part of the story, that would have been too perfect. Why are you doing this?
Jacob (43:07.614)
Yeah.
Jacob (43:12.43)
I know, right? Exactly. It’s this crazy commentary on like, you know, the people who are, you know, buying into this type of thing, right? Um, and, uh, so everything about this, I think this kind of leads into some of the other stuff I want to talk about, which is how they treat sacrifice as such. We’ve talked a lot about it, but I think that there’s interesting.
It’s interesting how they treat sacrifice in the context of this movie and how we understand it as Christians, right? Um, but fundamentally We should just remember that the sacrifice is being made to us, right that we’re the consumers, you know
mike (43:41.263)
Yeah.
mike (43:51.747)
It’s almost, it’s a caricature of sacrifice because it’s overemphasizing the blood part of it and not the like giving over of it, right? And so, yeah, go ahead.
Jacob (44:00.374)
Well…
Yeah, what I was gonna say is that sacrifice is a meal, right? Sacrifice is a shared meal. It’s a communion between, and this is in every culture. The thing about it is that we as modern people living in the West, in America circa 2023, think sacrifice means giving something up. And while that plays a role in it, in a sense, not like you have to provide something for the meal, you know.
mike (44:08.231)
Mm.
mike (44:15.577)
Mm.
Jacob (44:29.558)
That’s not what sacrifice is. Sacrifice is not giving something up. Sacrifice is communing with the gods. At the most fundamental level, it is a meal that’s shared. And this comes into ideas of hospitality that go all the way back to human origins. When you’re sharing your meal with other people, you are at your most, you know, what’s the word I’m looking for?
Exposed right like you’re bringing people into your home. You have your defenses down. You’re sharing a meal with each other it’s this very human act of hospitality and This is doing that with the gods like you’re communing with the gods by having a meal Of which of your most precious stuff, right? So that’s where the sacrifice that’s worth Hmm
mike (45:01.851)
Mm.
mike (45:19.503)
Well, that’s why you’d pour out a libation, right? It’s not because you were losing the drink, it’s because you were offering it to them, because you have a drink together. Yeah.
Jacob (45:26.934)
The gods are taking that drink. The gods are having that drink, right? And so what would happen, this is true of the Old Testament priesthood, this is true of any other pagan sacrifice. Even ones that don’t involve fire, we can talk about those too. Most sacrifices had to do with like burning up the offering, right? And what would happen is the best meats, right? The best cuts would go to the gods because you offer your hospitality to your guest, right?
And so you give them the best seat at the table and you give them the best food and all that stuff, right? And that gets thrown into a fire and it gets consumed by the fire and the smoke rises up into the heavens. And that is the gods, because the gods live in the heavens, eating the food, right? And then afterwards, everyone else eats the rest of the food. It’s a big barbecue. That’s what pagan sacrifices were.
mike (46:13.831)
Mm.
mike (46:20.059)
Well, and how fitting that it’s in communion with God or the gods that you’re then able to commune to become one with everybody around you. It’s like you have the vertical and then the horizontal. And we have that same structure in Christian communion, right? We have our union with God. Yeah, it is the union with God and the union with others.
Jacob (46:31.915)
Mm-hmm.
Jacob (46:38.078)
The Eucharist is this. Yes. This the Eucharist is a sacrifice. Yeah It is a one-to-one consistent Trajectory what happened when Christ came and inoculated his kingdom, you know in the church is the sacrifices in the temple that were handled through a priest Became universalized and we all became priests and now we all offer
the Eucharist, the one-time sacrifice, that’s Christ, but it gets re-presented in the Eucharist and we are all performing. And that doesn’t mean we don’t have priests, like there’s still like a priestly class, but we’re all participating in it because beforehand the meal that was actually shared with the God would, you know, happen with the priest or whatever. And then the meal that was shared with everyone else was basically like our coffee hour, you know.
mike (47:31.175)
Well, and this is what turns it on its head. You mentioned the thing about the gladiatorial games where the people fighting, those are like the sacrifice, right? Those are the ones being offered up. And the emperor, the one who holds his thumb up, down, or, you know, up or down, he’s like the priest. He’s the one making the offering. Well, where Jesus turns it, yeah, yeah. And whereas Jesus turns it on its head by not only being the victim, right, the one on the cross, but the priest as well.
Jacob (47:44.203)
Mm-hmm.
He’s the Pontiffus Maximus. He was the high priest of the Roman Empire. You know, like he was.
mike (47:59.191)
And so, it’s taking on both of those roles, which is why Christianity, like I said, whether you want to say, I think Gerard used the idea of stop breaking the wheel, or, and I know that is used in Game of Thrones, but the one who like stopped up the wheel, the typical mimetic wheel of scapegoating, Jesus, because he became the priest and the victim, he was able to stop that. And yeah, Christians continue to participate in that same priesthood of Jesus, either by our baptism,
Jacob (48:12.13)
Ha ha!
Uh…
Jacob (48:21.524)
Mmm.
mike (48:28.479)
or by the ministerial priesthood of holy orders, right? They’re doing that same thing. It’s not that they find a new victim or that it’s a new or different priest, it’s that you’re participating in the same one, right? The same priest and the same sacrifice. That’s the Eucharist. I mean, I know you’re talking about the Eucharist, so.
Jacob (48:42.87)
And no, absolutely. No, yeah. And I agree with everything you just said, which makes the understanding of sacrifice on display in Cam in the Woods, such a clear product of Protestant Western culture, right? Like, which has completely over time, you know, for better or for worse, I know there’s some classical Protestants that are have a much better grasp of this. But a lot of
Christianity that developed out of the centuries of Protestantism has completely lost sight of kind of what sacrifices are, right? No longer has the Eucharistic element in it. And sacrifice is just like giving up something. Sacrifice is just like it’s a kind of punishment. Like you’re, you’re punishing the animal, right? We’re going to kill an animal so we can punish it and it can take the sins upon. Yeah. There’s no sense of communion.
mike (49:33.02)
It’s bloodlust again. It’s just, it’s bloodlust again all over again. And that’s what we see in Cabin in the Woods.
Jacob (49:38.53)
There’s no sense of it being a barbecue meal where you’re sharing hospitality with the gods. It’s completely lost on like modernity in this kind of post-Protestant Christian West, right? And so that’s the type of sacrifice you see in this movie is like they’re just punishing victims.
mike (49:53.403)
But on the flip side is you better do it or the world’s gonna end or we’re gonna destroy everything. And that’s exactly what kind of brings us to, you know, and yeah, yeah.
Jacob (50:00.11)
because the sin has to be punished, you know, the sin has to be punished. Um, I, and so I did think about that a little bit, but then it does occur to me that there is a kind of consumption at play here, right? It’s the kind of capitalist, the capitalist consumer. No, no, we’re the gods, right? We’re the ones consuming the entertainment, right? We’re the ones showing up in a movie theater, eating popcorn together, drinking soda together.
mike (50:16.111)
Well yeah, they get thrown into the fire.
mike (50:20.795)
Oh, yeah.
Jacob (50:29.47)
and watching this play out in order to enjoy it. And so in the context of the movie, it’s this kind of superficial silly idea that sin has to be punished. But in the meta text of what this movie is doing, how this movie actually performs in life, in the theater setting, it really is, it actually does kind of come back to a sense of communal sacrifice, a community meal.
mike (50:34.185)
Mm.
mike (50:48.057)
Mm.
mike (50:56.741)
Mm.
Jacob (50:58.142)
a time to come together and practice hospitality with each other and things like that. Which is interesting, you know, I think that’s, I don’t know if, you know, I don’t know if the director like had thought about that. Maybe he did.
mike (51:11.811)
I think it’s one of those things where it’s unavoidable. Yeah, no, like you said, how intentional was it? Who can say? But it’s one of those where it’s almost unavoidable, where the sacrifice occurs. There is inevitably going to, even if it’s a distorted communion, there’s going to inevitably be some sort of communion. Even if it’s temporary, like the whole scapegoat thing that we talked about with Mimetic Theory and René Girard, that did cause, that did create communion, right? It was temporary and it was imperfect.
Jacob (51:39.598)
Yeah.
mike (51:41.459)
and it was around an innocent victim, which was unjust, but it did still, it did placate the community for at least a brief time until they had to do it again. I think you used the example of the lottery short story where it’s like, it did continue to work until they needed to do it again. Yeah. So no, it will happen whether you realize it or not.
Jacob (51:51.773)
Mm-hmm. Yep.
Jacob (51:55.69)
Yeah, once a year.
Jacob (52:06.006)
Um, uh, that just reminds me of like some of the other scenes, like, cause they’re in communication with all these other plants around the world, right? So there’s like the Japanese horror movie going on in the background. There’s a, there’s like a King Kong horror movie going on, like in Brazil, they’re like facing, facing a kaiju, which is like in the, in the context of the movie, it’s like, how does no one know that there’s kaijus, you know, maybe this is just a world where kaijus exist, you know, I don’t know, but like, oh.
mike (52:17.52)
Yeah.
mike (52:23.019)
Oh, I missed that one.
mike (52:34.104)
Yeah.
Jacob (52:35.626)
It’s funny seeing the different horror movies playing out in different settings, which are all supposedly these kind of like… You can almost believe that they’re being videotaped, right? And then actually that’s just like what you see in theaters, you know? It’s just like actual sacrifices being videotaped, you know?
mike (52:48.495)
Well, it’s, yeah. And it’s the trope from all these specific regional areas. Just like our trope is the American trope is cabin in the woods and the, you know, so.
Jacob (53:01.09)
Exactly, they’re all kind of unique though the Japanese ones funny like it’s little school girls being chased by an evil ghost Which if you know anything about Japanese, yeah, there’s There was a whole phase of Japanese seminar doing this. Yeah the grudge The ring the ring that’s a creepy movie man. It is if you haven’t seen that one. That’s pretty creepy. Yeah You know, so Let’s talk about the morality at the end of this movie though
mike (53:08.835)
It’s like an ascension, yeah.
mike (53:14.639)
grudge I remember that one I remember the grudge no oh yeah I remember that one too
Jacob (53:30.258)
As we’re kinda, we’re getting close to the end of this episode, so we might as well get to the question at the end of this movie. So, I guess full spoilers, we’ll just go through- yeah, you feeling strong, you feeling strong, Dana? It’s a great line. It’s a great line when he gives it. So, these- the stoner was supposed to have been killed off sooner, and they thought they had killed him, but he did not die. He rescues Dana.
mike (53:34.121)
Yeah.
mike (53:39.919)
Which is, Dana, you feeling strong? That’s the real question.
Jacob (53:58.87)
the virginal last girl and together they navigate the lab underneath everything trying to find a way out and they end up at basically like
mike (54:10.947)
in one of the most incredible like climaxes you can, I mean, absolutely. No, don’t it’s, it’s so crazy good. Yeah.
Jacob (54:13.958)
It’s one of those things where I’m not sure if I should spoil it or not, but like you have to see this movie. It’s so crazy. It’s quite the payoff. But, but like, but they end up confronting the director, right? They go all the way, they’re going down. They’re kind of sinking into hell, right? They just keep getting lower and lower and lower, you know, descent. Yeah. And they finally confront Sigourney Weaver’s director lady.
mike (54:35.856)
Descent to the underworld, man. This is archetypical.
Jacob (54:43.274)
And she explains to them. She finally just tells them exactly because up until this point they just have no idea what’s going on, you know? And she’s like, yeah, you are going to be sacrificed to save the planet. If you don’t, everyone dies. And they have a gun by this point. And the virginal girl, you know, has the gun in her possession. And the stoner is like, that’s monstrous. The fool has, she can live. All that has to happen.
mike (54:50.143)
Mm, just monsters everywhere, yeah.
mike (55:06.107)
So she, cause the fool has to be killed first. So she has the option to.
Jacob (55:13.538)
order for the world at the end of the world to be averted is for the fool to be killed and of the three people left standing in this movie the director the Virginal girl and the fool the virginal girl has the gun the directors like listen if you don’t kill him Everybody dies and she even has this language She’s like you can either die with everybody when the world ends or you can die for the world
Those are your options. Are you gonna die with us or are you gonna die for us? Right? Now, the fool is having none of it. The fool is like, that’s monstrous. You can’t just like kill my friends to sacrifice, you know, for these elder gods. What are you doing? You know, he basically has this kind of like quasi virtue ethics. I say quasi because we’re gonna explore it a little bit. But like, yeah, but like he’s basically coming at it from a virtue ethics standpoint. Like it’s wrong to murder innocent people.
mike (56:05.623)
Yeah, imperfect, but yeah.
mike (56:12.283)
He’s trying to break the wheel, you know, to go back to the language before. And it’s her dilemma she’s faced with. Am I going to continue with, continue it, keep the cycle moving, or am I going to participate? And it kind of, you said die with or die for, and it made me think of, you know, the word compassion. When we have compassion, it means we suffer with, but not replace the suffering, right? Not take it out.
Jacob (56:16.443)
And she’s faced with it, yeah.
Jacob (56:33.91)
Hmm Sure Well, and so she pulls the gun on her friend you know because she’s having this crazy moral quandary and Yeah, the director is like you got to be strong Dana and that’s when the fool gives his great line It’s like yeah, you feeling strong Dana you feeling strong He’s really he’s really you know raising the moral quit. Is this is this moral strength? Is this moral fortitude giving into?
mike (57:00.26)
Mm. Yeah.
Jacob (57:02.306)
this utilitarian broken system. And then a werewolf shows up and prevents her from killing her friend. But that kind of gives them a chance to reevaluate, gives Dana a chance to reevaluate what she was about to do, that she has distance from it. And ultimately she decides not to kill her friend. And the director gets dispatched in ways that you should just watch the movie. But…
mike (57:05.806)
Mm.
mike (57:11.963)
Yeah.
mike (57:30.875)
Just part of it, yeah. It’s fitting though, fitting for the story, yeah.
Jacob (57:34.935)
You know, at the end, you end up with just them sitting down waiting for the world to end, accepting their fate, not giving into this idea that this type of unjust system has to perpetuate in order to justify existence. The fool gives a line, he says, maybe it’s time to give the gods a chance or something like that.
mike (57:42.279)
Accepting their fate, yeah.
Jacob (58:02.282)
right, or you know, maybe the gods can have this back or something like that. Which, I mean, if you’re looking at this from a Christian perspective, when it comes to whether or not a Christian should practice virtue ethics or utilitarian ethics, oftentimes the type of decisions that we will make based upon virtue ethics is rooted in the idea that it’s not our world, that God’s in control of this.
mike (58:02.927)
Mm.
mike (58:26.311)
It’s a docility or a resignation that we’re not God, right? Or that we can’t play God. And that’s actually…
Jacob (58:30.014)
Yep. And we can’t understand it. We can’t anticipate it, but we can’t control it either. And we talked a lot about this in our last of a season finale question when it came down to all that conversation about Joel and what he does at the end of that show and things like that. And we…
mike (58:47.087)
facing a different but similarly apocalyptic situation.
Jacob (58:49.918)
Similar, yeah, absolutely. And we titled that episode, Saving the Whole World and Losing Your Soul. Right? Christian’s, wasn’t that pretty good? We’re so good at this. Yeah.
mike (58:57.647)
Well, that was clever, yeah. That was a clever title. Who came up with that? Yeah. I can’t believe you gave me that. I was teasing because it was mine, but I thought you were gonna give me a hard time about it. Yeah.
Jacob (59:11.781)
uh… you know Christians we worry about our soul we let God worry about the world we worry about our soul and at the end of the day that’s kind of what the fool does the only qualm I have with it is that he’s kinda doing it from a little bit more of a nihilistic place basically he kinda gives up on humanity
mike (59:27.875)
Which is fitting for like Joss Whedon’s whole, you know, MO. So that kind of makes sense too.
Jacob (59:32.39)
It is a deconstructive movie and you know at the end of the day basically he’s like you know If this system has to exist on the blood of innocence Then maybe this whole system has to go and he has a line In the very beginning of the movie Where he says society has to crumble. We’re just too chicken to let it And he’s talking about he’s talking about
Basically, you know how crazy he’s actually talking about the surveillance state in that context He’s talking about how messed up society has become and how like we’re not out in nature anymore You know kind of stoner talk, right? Yeah, like he kind of stoner talk, but true talk stuff I actually literally believe myself which is like we’re so entrapped in this kind of like technological malaise That we’re like losing our humanity and that society as such is becoming to put it in the Christian terms
mike (01:00:03.503)
Yeah.
mike (01:00:08.583)
They’re trying to go off the grid at the time, yeah.
Jacob (01:00:28.222)
a kind of Tower of Babel that is, you know, removing us from being, you know, in touch with like what we need to be in touch with.
mike (01:00:37.115)
go back to the idea of sacrifice is that his whole thing is that it’s shining a mirror to what’s actually being sacrificed. It’s not the youth or the lives of these young people, but when we perpetuate this cycle, this utilitarian or materialistic cycle, is that what is being sacrificed is our souls. That’s the thing that’s being offered up, and is it to the right God? Or is that really what we want to offer up? And that’s, so like I said, we can look down on it or be suspicious of it because of how deconstructive it is or…
Jacob (01:00:58.844)
Mm-hmm.
mike (01:01:06.935)
the various moments that maybe aren’t the most appropriate or whatever. But it’s like, there is a very, very deep truth that this, you know, horror movies in general, but this one especially, is really trying to shine a light to. If you give it a second, if you give it a chance, and if you give it some thought, I think. I mean, that’s only just part of the reason why I loved it. I was excited to…
Jacob (01:01:23.063)
Oh, totally.
Well, it’s just a very good story too. It’s very fun. It’s just a very fun movie. I mean, you know, hey, be warned. It’s there’s it’s bloody. It’s a horror movie. Right. You know, but it’s a it’s a surprisingly kind of moralistic movie, you know.
mike (01:01:39.802)
But as long as you can be ironic about it, that’s what makes it okay, right?
Jacob (01:01:43.522)
Well, and it’s so over the top, you know, that’s the other thing about these is like, it’s so over the top. I don’t think that as long as you the merman. Oh, boy. Oh, yeah. Perfect. There’s a lot of great humor in this movie. It’s a very fun flick and it’s really profound. Raises all kinds of interesting philosophical questions, and it does so in a very expertly paced plotted way.
mike (01:01:50.683)
The merman scene, I laughed out loud so hard. I laughed so hard at that. I was just like, yeah, that was good. It was good.
Jacob (01:02:12.686)
And we didn’t give you half of what’s fun about this movie. I’m telling you, all the moments, all the different things that happen, you know, at some point me and Mike are going to go to the bar and talk about all the things we didn’t talk about on this podcast, because there’s so many there’s so many fun things in this movie. But yeah, if it’s to your taste, right, if it’s to your taste, but it’s definitely to my taste as far as it goes.
mike (01:02:16.663)
No. No, really, I mean…
mike (01:02:25.963)
Oh man, we’ll have to do like an after hours episode or something. Yeah.
mike (01:02:35.739)
But that’s the thing is like, even if it isn’t, it like, you still can glean so much from it. But yeah, I know.
Jacob (01:02:39.954)
If there’s one horror movie that you’re going to subject yourself to like buckets of blood, even if you’re squeamish about that, this is probably the one worth subjecting yourself to.
mike (01:02:46.903)
Mm. This, I would, I would recommend this. Yeah. Over, I mean, tons of movies. Yeah. So, so good. And edifying too. I know, believe it or not. So if you want to be, if you want to be similarly edified by either those movies or this conversation, we just encourage you to like and subscribe to the show, leave a five star positive review, um, so that we can continue to justify Jacob watching all these inappropriate scary movies and talking about them. And, uh, yeah.
Jacob (01:03:13.563)
Mr. Game of Thrones.
mike (01:03:16.351)
We have a, hey, when we finally do an episode, then you can give me a hard time about it. So thank you guys and yeah, we look forward to the next conversation. Thanks, Jacob.
Jacob (01:03:20.674)
Ha ha ha!
Jacob (01:03:26.242)
Thank you.
“The Cabin in the Woods” – Destruction Via Deconstruction