Jenkins, Amy Acker and Whitford in The Cabin in the Woods.

On the advice of a friend who described The Cabin in the Woods as the next cinematic “happening” in horror and mayhem, I bit the bullet and suffered through a creepfest so stupid it makes trashy slash-and-burn epics like Humans Versus Zombies and I Spit on Your Grave seem like Molière and Proust. Some films have to seek their own audience like oil seeks its own level in water. Others arrive with a preordained sort of word-of-mouth anticipation that cannot be explained. This is one of them.

A testament to the wonders of writing under the guidance of crystal meth, this nightmare spoof of everything from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre to the Scream franchise totally defies logic, and pretty much eludes description. Five college kids take a motor van to a country weekend cabin. Stopping at a crumbling shack on a deserted road to buy gas, they encounter a cretin with rotting teeth and one eye who insults the women and spits tobacco juice at the men like a cross between Yosemite Sam and the winner of a talent show for troglodytes. Just behind the bloodstained glass window stands a barrel of meat hooks. Oh, I get it. It’s a send-up constructed from old movies and the clichés in Tales From the Crypt comics. Instead of heading back to civilization, onward they plunge, across a narrow mountain pass to the cabin of cobwebs. Rooms with two-way mirrors, grotesque paintings of brutality and massacre, and the creaking door to a cellar of corpses are just the beginning of a set that looks like the haunted house at Knott’s Berry Farm.

One by one, the visitors learn the meaning of “gotcha.” Zombies rise from the swamp and eat the sexy chick’s flesh. Vampires circle the moon and suck the hot stud’s blood. Only the smart girl who reads “Soviet Economic Structures” and the reefer-smoking doofus, so stoned he has to struggle to make complete sentences, manage to survive the monsters crashing through the ceiling, windows and floors. What they fail to notice is the hidden cameras. Yes! The rooms are all being monitored on a wall of video screens in some kind of remote science lab where an army of scientists like the security teams in Russian attack movies shift the course of the game with switches, including one labeled “Zombie Redneck Torture Family,” conjuring fresh hordes of killers from childhood nightmares to rise from their graves and gnaw, stab and mutilate the screaming victims. It’s all part of an elaborate video game that allows paying customers to watch real people slaughtered according to the horror of choice. The five kids in the cabin are innocent pawns to test the mechanics of the game, the way fiends in a horror movie test the sounds of screaming babies as they feed them to the jaws of mutated crocodiles.

The game, like the movie, is a meaningless absurdity. If it sells, people with a passion for gore can experience real terror while the players are shredded, one by one. What the game testers didn’t count on was luring a pair of victims smart enough to outwit them. The game ends only if the virgin survives. Somehow miraculously managing to figure it all out, the stoner and the brainy girl (who is also a virgin) crawl into a grave and get to the other side of the “ritual.” Then the real hell breaks loose and the whole movie collapses. It’s not a movie about acting, so ignoring the unfortunate people in it is an act of charity, but somehow Sigourney Weaver shows up in a neat spin on herself and her own sad contribution to horror movies to warn that if the virgin doesn’t survive it will mean the agonizing death of every human soul on the planet. But why say more? The Cabin in the Woods has died already in a boring finale full of metaphysical explanations that filch from every horror genre ever invented.

This is a first-time effort for director Drew Goddard, who developed a loud camp following by indulging his wacko imagination as producer and writer of numerous TV episodes of Lost and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The only imagination on view here is the creature effects. From snarling werewolves and humongous cobras to a faceless child in a ballerina costume whose entire countenance above the neck is nothing but a round hole filled with snapping razor-sharp teeth, the mythical monstrosities are awesome. The rest of the movie is the kind of time-wasting drivel designed to appeal to electronics nerds and skateboarders addicted to Xbox 360 video games whose knowledge of the arts begins and ends with MTV2. Instead of electronic wands like Nintendo’s Wii controllers, the master fiends working the control panels tap buttons and pull levers right out of Dr. Strangelove. As their victims plunge deeper and deeper, the narrative gets sillier and sillier. Maybe that’s why an entire row of what they call “fanboys” at the screening I attended laughed all the way through the movie, although I failed to see anything remotely amusing. I doubt if these people even know who Sigourney Weaver is.

At the risk of inviting a monsoon of unwanted hate mail, I admit it is indeed a brand-new world out there. I’m so glad I don’t have to write for it.

rreed@observer.com

THE CABIN IN THE WOODS

Running Time 95 minutes

Written by Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard

Directed by Drew Goddard

Starring Richard Jenkins, Bradley Whitford and Chris Hemsworth

1/4

And that's where it gets creepy.

While Will (Tom Sturridge) and Emma (Rachel Bilson) were indeed grade-school buddies, it soon becomes clear, as Will reunites with his older brother, Jim (Scott Mechlowicz), and friends Joe and Dolores (Nelson Franklin and Nikki Blonsky), that the two are not dating, and in fact have not spoken or seen each other in more than a dozen years, when Will and Jim's parents were killed in a train wreck and the boys had to move away. Emma is back in town to help care for her sick father (Richard Jenkins), and Will has followed her there. In fact, he follows her everywhere--a fact the makers of this film seem to find heartwarming. He's smitten! It's true love! No, it's obsessive stalking paired with what looks to be a fairly severe personality disorder. Did I also mention that he's a mime? And habitually speaks out loud to his dead parents? In any place other than Hollywood, this love story would be grounds for a restraining order.

But Emma, who is dealing with a faltering acting career and a recent breakup in addition to her father's imminent death, needs a little break from reality, which Will, stuck as he is in a disturbing Peter Pan stage of mental and emotional development, is tailor-made to provide. After finally summoning the nerve to approach her (by jumping out of her childhood tree house, naturally), Will convinces Emma to spend the afternoon with him. He takes her to the site of an old soda shop they used to spend time in--now a dive bar--and insists upon sitting on what he calls "their stools," dislodging customers even though there are other empty seats available. Red flag No. 1. Then, they decamp to a playground, where he recalls in frightening detail mundane moments they shared as children. Red flag No. 2. By the time Emma realizes that something might be wrong with her playful, pajama-clad paramour, there are so many red flags she might as well be at a communist rally.

I'm not sure what went wrong with this picture. It could just be bad judgment on the part of screenwriter Steve Adams, who for all we know finds stalking adorable, or who thought that perhaps if Will had a sad enough back story, his disturbing obsession could be forgiven (he is clearly intended to be sweet and harmless, but something gets lost in translation). I don't think the blame falls on Mr. Sturridge, who, with his squinty eyes, chiseled cheekbones and pillowy mouth, is about as cute as one can get when playing what amounts to a deranged clown. He does have some affectations--especially his soft, nervous movements (which are meant to be Chaplin-esque but read as mildly autistic) and lusty, blank stares--that contribute to Will's naïve menace, but in the body of another actor, who knows? Will might have been even scarier.

There are, thankfully, a few side plots that give Mr. Sturridge's endless antics a rest. Blythe Danner nearly steals the movie (I wish) as Emma's mother, upended by worry and premature grief, and Richard Jenkins is reliably subtle and superb as the gruff, ailing patriarch. We're also treated to a brief, ridiculous twist in which Emma's ex-boyfriend, Aaron (Matthew Davis), arrives in town and manages to get Will arrested for murder. Sadly, he doesn't stay behind bars for long, and once he's released, Emma forgives him. I suppose we can't blame her--he may be a stalker, but at least he hasn't killed anyone, which is more than you can say for a lot of the people on eHarmony. Or so I've heard.

ulamarche@observer.com

Waiting For Forever
Running time 94 minutes
Written by Steve Adams
Directed by James Keach
Starring Rachel Blison, Tom Sturridge, Blythe Danner, Richard Jenkins
1.5/4

x

Tom McCarthy’s The Visitor, from his own screenplay, is nothing short of a triumph for 60-year-old character actor Richard Jenkins, in his first leading role in a feature film. Mr. Jenkins has hitherto been best known as the ghostly undead undertaker in the hit cable series, Six Feet Under. Here Mr. Jenkins plays 62-year-old Walter Vale, a just-going-through-the-motions economics professor at a Connecticut college, where he teaches only one class a semester on the pretext he is working on his fourth book in his field of study, his first three presumably not having set the world on fire. He has been especially lethargic since the recent death of his wife. To fill the void in his existence, Walter has belatedly started taking piano lessons in classical music from a succession of piano teachers, each of whom has told him that he has no aptitude for music. His last teacher suggests that if he finally does give up his futile quest for a minimal proficiency, he consider selling her his piano, which he dispiritedly does in due time.

Up to this point in the narrative, Walter’s ennui has not been exaggerated to the extent that it works as either pure farce or pungent satire. He does just enough to keep up the appearance that he’s still indeed pursuing a career in education and writing—just enough, but not much more. When he is virtually ordered by a superior to read a paper at a Manhattan academic conference of economics professors, Walter reluctantly agrees, even though the paper has actually been written by an indisposed colleague.

He returns to a Manhattan apartment he and his wife used during their theater visits and off-term vacations. Walter is surprised to discover that it is now occupied by an illegal alien couple, Syrian musician Tarek (Haaz Sleiman) and his Senegalese girlfriend, Zainab (Danai Gurira). The couple has been swindled by an unscrupulous real estate agent into believing that the apartment could be theirs for a small fee. After the initial misunderstanding is cleared up, the couple prepares to leave, but on an impulse Walter persuades them to stay until they can find another place of their own.

In the days that follow, Walter becomes attuned to Tarek’s beating on an African drum, and then purchases his own. Tarek offers to teach Walter; Walter begins to attend Tarek’s jam sessions with other drummers, and begins participating himself. They both visit Zainab’s sidewalk market, where she sells her handicrafts.

Then one day when Walter and Tarek are on a subway platform on the way home from a drum session, Tarek is picked up by two immigration agents and asked to show his legal documents, which he is unable to do. He is immediately taken to the nearest police precinct. When Walter finally tracks Tarek down, he assures him that he will get a lawyer for his case, which he promptly does. When Walter tells Zainab that Tarek has been arrested, she insists on moving out of the apartment for propriety’s sake, and moving to a girlfriend’s place instead. Walter asks her in vain to stay, but respects the dignity shown in her decision.

Meanwhile, Tarek’s beautiful Palestinian mother, Mouna (Hiam Abbass), arrives from Michigan to see her son and his girlfriend, whom she had never met. She is a little surprised to see the African darkness of her skin, but the two women embrace emotionally over their mutual loss of Tarek. Walter takes a leave of absence from his college to arrange all these meetings and other details. He also develops a romantic interest in Mouna, which she reciprocates. A life of lethargy has by now been transformed into one of rejuvenating commitment to the cause of illegal aliens in our midst, at the mercy of ruthless immigration officials with only minimal restraint.

Yet despite Walter’s efforts, Tarek is quickly deported back to Senegal, from which Tarek and Zainab had previously been denied asylum. And despite her love for Walter, Mouna decides that she must follow her son to Senegal. Walter accepts her decision and then makes one final act to affirm that the course of his life has changed irrevocably.

Mr. McCarthy, who has previously won critical and festival plaudits as the writer-director of The Station Agent (2003), has also worked as an actor in Flags of Our Fathers, Syriana, Good Night, and Good Luck, Year of the Dog and Meet the Parents. He was also featured in the final season of HBO’s series The Wire.

The Visitor is the second feature film that plays as if it were meant to serve as a rebuke to Lou Dobbs, the popular cable news commentator, who has made himself the media focus for a tougher policy toward illegal aliens. The earlier seemingly anti-Dobbsian cinematic statement was Patricia Riggen’s Under the Same Moon, with a screenplay by Ligiah Villalobos (in English and Spanish with English subtitles). That it set a first-week box-office record for a subtitled film is not surprising in view of its shamelessly sentimental soap-opera story, about a Mexican mother (Kate del Castillo), an illegal alien working in L.A., literally mooning over her little boy left behind in Mexico. When the little boy (the angelic Adrian Alonso) sets out to cross the border in search of his mother, and succeeds in overcoming the most fearsome obstacles, mostly immigration agents, to hug his mother at the final fade-out, the moon itself begins to mist over with tears. My considered advice is to skip Under the Same Moon, and, by all means, see The Visitor, if only for its comparative restraint.

One film worth time and attention but without a big budget to announce its arrival in full-page ads is actor-turned-writer-director Tom McCarthy’s moving, humane and life-affirming new film The Visitor. This honorable and thought-provoking follow-up to Mr. McCarthy’s highly and deservedly well-received debut feature, The Station Agent, is that rare low-budget film that is really about something more than self-indulgence. There is nothing mediocre about it, and a great deal that will make you think and feel and, yes, care about the world you live in.

No stars here to lend glamour and marquee value, but the central force is Richard Jenkins, best known as the funeral director patriarch in that great HBO series Six Feet Under, who pumps up the volume admirably. He plays 62-year-old Walter Vale, a bored and disillusioned Connecticut economics professor whose life since the death of his wife and companion of many years has lost its zip. Implacable, stern, set in his ways, he spends most of his time in solitude, studying piano from a kind teacher (Marian Seldes) who knows it’s a skill for which her pupil has no aptitude. One night he returns to the New York apartment he almost never uses, and finds it occupied by two black intruders—Tarek, a musician from Syria (Haaz Sleiman), and his Senegalese girlfriend, Zainab (Daina Guerira), who are victims of a bad real estate scam. First he’s fearful, then furious, but when Walter realizes the needy strangers are now homeless, he discovers in himself enough compassion to let them stay on for a few days. In appreciation, the husband gives his host free drum lessons, and the wife’s culinary skills introduce delicious new spices to his palate. As the days stretch into weeks, the shy, uptight, anal-retentive stuffed shirt finds hidden reserves of curiosity and fun he didn’t know he had. Then he gets a rude awakening to the fates that await the lives of the disadvantaged. When the poor boy is arrested for one of the million absurd charges New York cops come up with daily and turned over to the immigration authorities, Walter finds a cause. He visits the grim detention center for illegal immigrants where the terrified Tarek is held; extends his hospitality to include the boy’s mother, who arrives from Damascus; and frees the soulful spirit he’s held hostage inside by falling for the beautiful new member of his household. Before it ends, Walter is a stranger to his own friends and colleagues: eating strange cuisine, playing bongos in the subway, fighting to save his new friends from deportation and becoming an activist for the rights democracy now denies visitors who have committed no crimes. The film does not end with its problems neatly resolved, its loose ends tied in festive bows or its broken hearts easily mended. But while it opens our eyes to the plight of those who are falsely detained without counsel for as long as the U.S. government sees fit, without hope of release, it also teaches us that the unhappiest people can change and improve by opening their hearts and minds to new ideas.

Director McCarthy has a special affinity for fresh, unusual characters who are drawn together despite their differences in age, cultural background, education and personality, and in Walter he (and the wonderful Richard Jenkins) creates the kind of viable man we all know and some of us have become. The tragedy of the “visitors” expands his horizons and gives him impetus, focus and reasons to live outside his own skin. A marvelous film, small in expense but big in stature.