This weekend, I drove from Baton Rouge to Holland, Michigan with a 36-hour stop in the outskirts of St. Louis. It’s an easy drive—once you hit I-55, you just keep the car pointed north. For 15 hours. Lotta time to contemplate the wonders of the universe. Or Cabin in the Woods.
I contemplated Cabin in the Woods.
During my St. Louis pit-stop, I saw my buddy’s nine month-old daughter nicknamed Cannonball, went trap shooting, experienced the magic of Ted Drewes frozen custard, and watched Cabin in the Woods. And most of season 4 of Archer. And part of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.
You have to have something on in the background while you keep the baby from making poor life choices like gnawing on the bottom of your flipflops. Or gnawing on power cords.
Now I liked Cabin in the Woods a lot. Intriguing concept. It was a fun. It moved fast. It had some cleverly-constructed funny bits (the Mer-Man’s revenge, for instance). It featured fellow Illinois Wesleyan University alum Richard Jenkins as one of the fusty bureaucrats tasked with–
STOP READING NOW IF YOU DON’T APPRECIATE SPOILERS
–guiding young people to their grisly deaths in order to prevent elder gods from escaping their titan’s prison and destroying humanity. So there is a lot to like. The script is relatively well-built despite all the moving parts.
But there was one scene that stuck out a bit as something that could use a quick fix: when the Golden Boy Jock triumphantly and heroically attempts to jump his dirt bike to freedom! But slams into an invisible forcefield. And dies. Spectacularly.
If you need a memory jolt (or don’t care about spoilers), here’s the scene set-up. Our five young protags are in the titular cabin and quickly unleash a family of lunatic-fringe zombies who start hackin’ and stabbin’ away. Two of the heroes are dispatched and the other three make a break for it in their RV. Just as they’re about to get their sweet sweet freedom, their escape plan is foiled when IWU alum Richard Jenkins manages to cause a cave-in that blocks the ONLY WAY OUT (by jiggling some wires). But wait! Golden Boy Jock just happens to have his dirt bike strapped to the back of the RV. And he thinks he can jump across a bottomless canyon and GO GET HELP.
It’s a risky move, but he’ll do anything to save his friends! The music swells. He revs his engine. He delivers an emotional speech promising to come back “with cops, and choppers, and large fucking guns, and those things are going to pay.” We’re ready for Golden Boy Jock to SAVE THE DAY and so it’s a huge shock when he splatters against the force field keeping them in the cabin-y area. And dies. Spectacularly. Right?
Wrong. As soon as he pulled the dirt bike off the RV, I turned to my buddy and made the universal “dirt bike slamming into forcefield” gesture. (You know that one, right?)
The point is that the filmmakers telegraphed this story move so obviously that it didn’t work as a twist. Or a shock. At least for me.
Here’s why it was so easy to foresee it.
Because they’re dealing with a fairly unique concept, the filmmakers had to set up the rules of the world quickly and cleanly. Which they did a decent job of. And they opted to set-up the rule that the cabin-y area is surrounded by a forcefield, so when Golden Boy Jock smashes into it and careens down into an endless chasm, it didn’t feel like a total cheat. They set it up when our doomed Scooby gang drives through the entrance/exit tunnel in the first act and the camera follows the RV and then a hawk that SCREECHES and abruptly smashes into the force field. So we know 1) there is a forcefield and 2) that it roughly surrounds the area. Particularly in the chasm-y parts.
Fast forward to Golden Boy Jock planning to jump the chasm and bring the cavalry. At this point, if you weren’t stumbling to the refrigerator to get another Tin Roof Blonde Ale that brought with you from Baton Rouge when the hawk screeched into the forcefield initially, you know that there are two possible outcomes to this scenario: 1) Golden Boy Jock makes it to freedom like he says or 2) he smashes into a forcefield. And dies. Spectacularly.
Uh. Clearly it’s gonna be number 2.*
The reason why we know it’s number 2 is that they filmmakers have done a good job setting up that as a possibility, but they haven’t done anything to set up number 1 as a real possibility in the movie.
In the first act, our protags have only interacted with themselves and the creepy gas station attendant. (And he’s definitely not gonna help them out.) But if they’d been pulled over by a cop or something during their drive, at least this would’ve introduced the notion that there IS help somewhere, if only Golden Boy Jock can make the jump. But we don’t even see other students at their college, let alone anything that suggests the helicopters and big guns that Golden Boy Jock promises to retrieve (maybe they drive past an Army base?)—so when GBJ revs his engine and the orchestra picks up and he starts speechifying, your film-brain is telling you that the only real option is that he smashes into a forcefield. And dies. Spectacularly.
The takeaway here: if you plant that Chekhovian gun in the first act, it’s gotta go off. If you have a shock or twist that relies on the audience forgetting about that gun, you gotta give them a reason to forget it. Bait and switch. Smoke and mirrors. A plausible non-gun scenario that at least puts that kernel of doubt in their mind. Otherwise you’re telegraphing your moves.
*insert pre-pubescent poop humor here.
FADE OUT 