It is only this go-round that I realized why this movie holds up better than most post-Scream meta slashers.

How do you make a meta slasher movie in the mid-2000s without it being tired and late to the party? Well, making it a stealthy satire of true crime fandom is a pretty good starting place.

Or: What if Cabin in the Woods had been made several years earlier by people who liked the horror genre a whole lot rather than being obviously, openly contemptuous of it?

It’s a pretty great hidden gem…but the screenwriters need to stop trying to make “Survivor Girl” happen. We’ve had a word for that for 30 years.

2:00 Wes Craven roots
4:00 The Vanilla Ice defense
7:00 Found footage
9:30 A cast of unknowns
14;00 That true crime shade
20:00 Stop saying “survivor girl”
24:00 “We couldn’t get Donald Pleasence”
27:00 Leslie the sociopath
35:00 Those gender politics
40:00 Final girl as complicit
45:00 TURTLE MAN
49:00 Taylor woes
56:00 Cabin in the Woods
60:00 Should you watch this?

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