Re: Cabin in the Woods
I think people get to caught up on trying to analyze why Dana and Marty did what they did, as though their actions in that scene are the outcome of level headed thought and analytic thinking, when (I think) the movie makes it perfectly clear that we are dealing with two people on the very brink of their sanity who are given a choice between killing the living human being directly in front of them, the same person they just spent the entire day dealing with this shit with, and who on numerous occasions saved each others ass, or saying enough with the killing let it all burn (An action which has no understandable consequences to them at that moment, it's something so much larger than them, something they can't even begin to comprehend. And so in that moment, the two of them chose the choice they had where they could feel like they're were in control...not killing each other.
Okay, so this post is based on me having re-watched portions of the movie. In an earlier post, I said that we're given no reason to suspect that the kids might turn on each other, which isn't quite true. We do get a small hint from Sitterson right after he's been stabbed when he tells Dana to kill Marty. The exposition dump at the end is still really clumsy and unconvincing, though.
My impression wasn't that Dana and Marty made a logical choice to end the world. But they also didn't strike me as two tortured souls caving into human weakness. They both seem fully aware of the consequences of their actions, but act as if they're not personally invested, which doesn't make any sense.
I kinda agree with Marcus. Because the overall tone of the movie is so flippant, Dana and Marty's choice does make them seem a bit like a couple of kids flipping the whole world the finger.
I mean, I don't know if I could kill my friend under those circumstances either, but I would at least give a thought to my family and friends and what might happen to them as a consequence if I didn't. Dana says, "The whole world, Marty." and yet her words seem to fail to sway him in the slightest. And then later, in a complete turnaround, Dana says, "It's time to give someone else a chance." This s a thin justification at best, but my biggest problem is that this attitude comes completely out of left field. She seemed pretty distraught when her other friends died, but unless those were the only people in the whole world she cared about, why is she so disinterested in the fact that everyone else is going to die?
The only thing I liked about Cabin in the Woods was that the group of college kids felt like real human beings. They were funny, smart, interesting, and nice. I cared about what might happen to them. They were really fleshed out as people who had lives beyond the boundaries the movie they were in dictated. But the ending throws all of that out of the window, and we're given another helping of cynicism that limits them and their actions to those of stock characters in a scary movie.
I would've much preferred it if Dana and Marty were sorta partly swayed by Ripley's words, but Dana gets taken out by the werewolf and she dies before the sun comes up, leaving Marty to reflect on the end of the world alone.
