10 Misleading Movie Trailers That Scared You Off Amazing Movies
4. Cabin In The Woods
What The Trailer Sold You:
Prototypical horror movie schlock stuffed full of young, dumb hotties, spooky remoteness, and a hidden evil lurking around every corner. It looks fun, but only in the way that watching Halloween II for the dozenth time is fun. You know these characters, you know these musical cues, and you know how it will end because you've seen it so many times before.
What You Missed:
Cabin In the Woods is a movie predicated on subverting expectations, so in retrospect, it's fitting that the trailer was one giant hoodwink. The ad hints at something beneath the surface, but it doesn't (and couldn't) divulge its greatest strength: Self-awareness.
This is a Scream-esque examination of the boundless stupidity that's appeared in slasher flicks since they became en vogue in the 70s. It takes the same ridiculous situations from say, a Halloween II, and grounds them in reality. Those things you and your friends yell at the screen whenever some stupid person in a horror movie does some stupid thing? That's what Cabin In the Woods is all about.
And it straddles the difficult line of openly mocking the traditions of horror movies while also scaring the hell out of you using some very similar methods.