The Cabin in The Woods

The Cabin in The Woods, a Joss Whedon production from 2012 is classified as a horror, mystery and thriller movie. This film brought in a total of $66,486,080 worldwide but had an estimated budget of about $30,000,000 resulting in a small and barely doubled profit. There is no mention of comedy on IMDB (contrary to Wikipedia) and watching the trailer, you wouldn’t expect a single humorous line to come out of any actors mouth. Yet comedy plays a constant and immense role in this film. The comedy which Whedon is famous for bringing into his works is what makes this movie stand apart from other horror movies or thrillers. We wondered if the marketing of this film was a part of the limited success of this movie. How might it have done if it had been advertised as more of a comedy, rather than your run of the mill teen horror movie? Would it have drawn more of an audience or would it have flopped just as much? Our goal in remaking the trailer for The Cabin in The Woods was to advertise it as a comedic thriller of sorts. Our hypothesis is that if it had been marketed differently, rather had it been marketed as a humorous horror film, it would have been wildly more successful, bringing in a much larger profit.

In order to choose our scenes, we focused on two main thoughts – what was scary or typical to a horror trailer and what was comedic and would be found in a trailer for a comedy. These two, juxtaposed in this trailer, are a much more accurate description of the movie itself. To enhance the comedy and dramatic effect of the trailer, we used the taglines found on IMDB. Things like, “you think you know the story” and “If the basement door swings open, go down there.” These lines are such accurate descriptions of the movie, seeing as these kids do everything you’re never supposed to do when you’re in a horror film. They are also accurate descriptions of the trailer we have created, showing that Whedon chooses to mock the horror film genre in a way by questioning what makes a good horror movie.