When it comes to horror satire films, Scream is often considered to be the cream of the crop. Directed by a master of horror, Wes Craven’s 1996 franchise starter functions as a slasher and murder mystery while also satirizing the countless slasher tropes and trends that plagued the 1980s and ’90s. Scream has received all kinds of sequels, and even its own parody in the form of Scary Movie, cementing its legacy as one of the horror satire greats.
However, it isn’t the best one. Scream is easily the most popular and one of the most successful, but that doesn’t automatically make it the greatest one. Instead, the best horror satire film would hit theaters 16 years later on April 13, 2012 – and it came as a complete surprise to scary movie fans and critics alike, especially when the movie introduces a massive pivot midway through. And while that might have seen random at the time, it’s actually the film’s most important choice.
While there is a lot to love about Scream, the film’s quality of satire pales in comparison to The Cabin in the Woods. Directed by Drew Goddard and written by Goddard and Joss Whedon, the film presents itself as a simple slasher flick about a group of young adults dealing with zombies while on a forest retreat. Secretly, however, The Cabin in the Woods is much more than just another The Evil Dead knockoff. Beneath the woods lies a massive facility that houses a secret organization and cages featuring all varieties of monsters and mythological creatures. The organization is tasked with eliminating a group similar to the main characters every year in order to appease deities known as the Ancient Ones, and if they don’t, it may bring about the end of the world.
The Cabin in the Woods is structured around highlighting common horror tropes, with the shadowy villains of the film having a plan that is a metatextual commentary on how these types of films typically go. The five main characters are recognized in-universe as archetypes, filling in the roles of the whore, the athlete, the scholar, the fool, and the virgin. According to the organization, the whore has to die first, and the virgin has to die last or survive, and while this isn’t a literal screenwriting rule, you would think it is based on how frequently it happens in normal slashers.
Scream is definitely metatextual, as it constantly references other horror films and has characters point out horror tropes while engaging in them themselves. However, The Cabin in the Woods goes far beyond that. The shadowy organization is a stand-in for the filmmakers, and the Ancient Ones are a stand-in for the audience, and in the movie and in real life, the former has to constantly put on this horrific show for the latter. Like the Ancient Ones, audiences feel like they must continuously receive the same types of horror films over and over again, and because of this demand, filmmakers step in to provide the supply. While in-universe the organization is actually killing people, the film’s allegory is otherwise spot-on, and it’s hard to watch a serious movie about kids going to a cabin in the woods without thinking about Goddard’s satirical masterpiece.
Scream is specifically a parody of the slasher genre, meaning that viewers who aren’t fans of series like Halloween, Friday the 13th, and A Nightmare on Elm Street may not be able to get much out of the film. However, The Cabin in the Woods goes much farther than that. The film’s shadowy organization gives it an excuse to feature all kinds of horror creatures from across the genre, meaning that if you’re a fan of any horror film, you’re probably going to find something that resonates with you here.
The film has clowns, demons, zombies, mummies, serial killers, witches, vampires, werewolves, mutants, snakes, and so much more. It mentions iconic movie monsters like the Deadites from The Evil Dead and creatures from the Left 4 Dead video game series. The creatures featured in the film go far beyond killers like Michael Myers, Jason, and Freddy, with it expanding beyond slashers into the Universal Monsters, creature features, ghost films, and all kinds of other horror subgenres. There is so much packed into The Cabin in the Woods that it’s hard not to find something to love, and there is almost always something new to find on a rewatch. So, while Scream is still a great film that you should check out, Cabin in the Woods is just as deserving of a viewing.
