Oh, My Pop Culture Elder Gods: The Cthulu Mythos

At the beginning of the 20^th century, H.P. Lovecraft wrote a series of stories about darkly powerful elder gods and eldritch horrors. These “Great Old Ones” were “ancient, powerful deities from space who once ruled the Earth and who have since fallen into a deathlike sleep”. The most well known among these mythical figures was Cthulu, and even if you’ve never read a single Lovecraft story I’d be shocked if you didn’t think of giant octopus monsters and grimy insanity when someone mentions Cthulu or Lovecraftian horror in general.

There’s something uniquely appealing about a pantheon of powerful, uncontrollable, sleeping gods who if you look upon their true form, will drive you to insanity, and so even after Lovecraft’s death the Mythos has carried on, appearing in all sorts of media.

Spoilers for Cabin in the Woods, Homestuck, Haiyore! Nyarko-san below the jump.

Cabin in the Woods: A Spoilertastic Review

Very rarely do I walk out of a horror movie blown away by how hilarious it was.

(Well, very rarely do I walk out of a horror movie at all; I don’t usually have the stomach for them.)

I know this movie came out at the beginning of the summer and that this review is thus rather late. All my summer movie-viewing money went to that other little Joss Whedon movie you might have heard of, The Avengers? But one of my best friends highly recommended it, so when I saw that my campus was hosting a showing of it Thursday night, I jumped at the chance.

Here’s the premise of The Cabin in the Woods. Imagine every horror movie scenario ever: a jock, a nerd, an idiot, a sexy blonde, and a virgin brunette go to a mysterious location in the name of fun. While there, they accidentally wake a terrible evil and are gruesomely murdered by said evil (the virgin last, and her death is optional). Now imagine that every aspect of this scenario was carefully planned and calculated and orchestrated by technicians in a mysterious base with a mysterious purpose.

If you want more explanation, hit the jump. If you’d rather not be spoiled, just know that I loved this movie and you should see it.

Trailer Tuesdays: Cabin in the Woods

It’s Trailer Tuesdays! Let’s talk about Cabin in the Woods!

I want to tell you that this trailer looks awesome and that I’m sure it will be amazing since Joss Whedon is producing it, because he always gives us strong female characters… but I can’t. Really the trailer just looks like the typical horror movie with the exception that someone is controlling what happens to the teenagers. Which would be interesting if the characters didn’t seem like the stereotypical cliched horror movie characters. However the trailer does make a point in telling you that “You think you know the story…” so that could very well be the point. Make everything look like the typical horror story, but then turn it on its head. While I’m not impressed with the trailer so far I am intrigued, which to this trailers credit, is what trailers are supposed to do. Joss Whedon hasn’t led me wrong before and the trailer is at least interesting enough to get me into the theater. Let’s hope this movie exceeds expectations and isn’t just another cliche.