It Follows - The Cabin in the Woods

It Follows – It doesn’t think, it doesn’t feel, it doesn’t give up. For 19-year-old Jay, fall should be about school, boys and weekends out at the lake. But a seemingly innocent physical encounter turns sour and gives her the inescapable sense that someone, or something, is following her. Faced with this burden, Jay and her teenage friends must find a way to escape the horror that seems to be only a few steps behind. Jay Height dates Hugh and they have casual sex on the backseat of his car. Then he abducts her and tells that he has passed a curse through the intercourse to her and shows a walker coming towards them. He warns that she must pass the curse to another man; otherwise she will be hunted down by the walker. Further, the walker changes form and may look like someone she loves. If it kills her, he will be followed again. Jay shares the secret with her sister Kelly Height and her friends Yara, Paul and Greg Hannigan. Soon Jay learns that Hugh has told the truth and her sister and friends try to help her. Will she succeed to escape from the supernatural being?

Michigan college student Jay sees a film with her new boyfriend, Hugh. In the theater, Hugh points out a girl whom Jay says she cannot see. Afraid, he asks that they leave. On another date, Hugh and Jay have sex in his car and he incapacitates her with chloroform. She wakes up tied to a wheelchair. Hugh explains that she will be pursued by an entity that only she can see, which can take the appearance of any person. Although it only moves at a walking pace, if it catches Jay, it will kill her and pursue the previous person to have passed it on: Hugh. After they see a naked woman walking toward them, Hugh drives Jay home and flees. The next day, the police cannot find the woman or Hugh, who was living under a false identity. At school, Jay sees an old woman in a hospital gown and walking towards her, invisible to others. Jay’s older sister Kelly and her friends Paul and Yara agree to help and spend the night in the same house. Paul investigates a smashed kitchen window but sees no one; Jay sees a bloodied half-naked woman walking toward her. Jay runs upstairs to the others, who cannot see the entity. When a tall man with gouged-out eyes enters the bedroom, Jay flees the house.

With the help of their neighbor, Greg, the group discovers Hugh’s real name, Jeff Redmond, and trace him to his address. Jeff explains that the entity began pursuing him after a one-night stand, and that Jay can pass it to someone else in the same way. The group drives to Greg’s lake house, where Jay learns to fire a gun. The entity take multiple guises, attacks Jay on the lakefront. She shoots it but it recovers. Jay flees in Greg’s car but crashes into a cornfield, and wakes up in a hospital with a broken arm. Greg sleeps with Jay as he does not believe the entity exists. Days later, Jay sees the entity in the form of Greg smash the window to his house and enter. She tries to warn the real Greg on the telephone but he does not answer. She runs into the house and finds the entity in the form of Greg’s half-naked brother knocking on his door; it jumps on Greg and kills him. Jay flees by car and spends the night outdoors. On a beach, Jay sees three young men on a boat. She undresses and walks into the water. Back home, Jay refuses Paul’s offer of sex.

The group plans to kill the entity by luring it into a university swimming pool and plunging electrical devices into the water. Jay, waiting in the pool, spots the entity and realizes it has taken the appearance of her father as it throws the devices at her. Firing at an invisible target, Paul accidentally wounds Yara, but shoots the entity in the head, causing it to fall into the pool. As it pulls Jay’s foot underwater, Paul shoots it again and Jay escapes. Paul asks Jay if the entity is dead. Jay approaches the pool which slowly fills with blood. Jay and Paul have sex. Afterwards, Paul drives past prostitutes in a seedy part of town. Later, Jay and Paul walk down the street holding hands while someone walks behind them.

10 Cloverfield Lane – Monsters come in many forms. Waking up from a car accident, a young woman finds herself in the basement of a man who says he’s saved her life from a chemical attack that has left the outside uninhabitable. After a car crash, Michelle is brought to a mysterious bunker by a man named Howard. She has been given the information that there has been an alien attack and the air is now toxic outside. However, Howard’s intentions soon become questionable and Michelle is faced with a question. Is it better in here or out there? Soon after leaving her fiancée Michelle is involved in a car accident. She awakens to find herself sharing an underground bunker with Howard and Emmett. Has she been saved from an apocalyptical event as Howard and Emmett tell her or are there other motives for her being held against her will?

Following an argument with her fiancée, Michelle packs up and leaves New Orleans, driving through rural Louisiana late at night. The radio tells of blackouts in major cities. Suddenly her red Volkswagen Jetta is hit by something and rolls off the road and she awakens in a concrete room chained to a wall. A man named Howard unlocks the door and tells a terrified Michelle, “I’m going to keep you alive.” She tries to ambush him, but he fends off the attack and explains that he saved her life by find her wreck and bringing her here, because there has been a massive attack by the Martians – possibly nuclear or chemical, and everyone is dead. He tells a doubtful Michelle that she can’t leave because the nuclear or chemical fallout will contaminate the air for one or two years. Michelle meets Emmett, an ignorant employee of Howard, who witnessed an apocalyptic, red flash far away, and then forced his way into Howard’s bunker. Through a window in the outer door, Howard shows Michelle two dead pigs outside that have sores on their bodies, apparently from a chemical weapon. Michelle also sees Howard’s truck and regains the memory of it forcing her off the road.

During the trio’s first dinner together that night, Michelle steals Howard’s keys and is about to unlock the final door, when a car pulls up outside. Leslie, a woman suffering from severe skin lesions emerges from the car and begs to be let inside. When she violently bangs her head against the tiny reinforced window to try to break in, Michelle realizes Howard was right, and doesn’t open the door. Unprovoked, Howard confesses to her that in his panic during the attack, he accidentally hit her car. As time passes, the trio begins getting along and adapting to life underground. But Howard has little tolerance for Emmett, and can only perceive Michelle as a little girl. When they hear loud noises above, Howard assumes it is airborne patrols sweeping the last signs of life.

When the ventilator fails, Michelle is the only one small enough to crawl through the air duct to the ventilation room, where she finds a padlocked hatch to the outside, with the word “HELP” scratched on the inside of the glass. Howard tells Michelle about his beloved daughter, who is “not with us anymore.” Michelle and Emmett eventually detect inconsistencies in his story, including discovering that the picture of his daughter Howard showed Michelle is actually a girl who went missing two years before. They suspect Howard abducted and murdered her, and they secretly begin fashioning a makeshift biohazard suit for an escape outside.

Discovering they used his tools, Howard threatens to dissolve them both in a drum of perchloric acid unless they reveal why they used his tools. Emmett accepts the blame, claiming he had planned to steal Howard’s gun; Howard immediately shoos him in the head. While Michelle is grieving, Howard returns shaven and groomed, insisting it was only right to kill him, especially since it was meant to be only the two of them together. Michelle is completing the biohazard suit when Howard finds it. She flees coming across Emmett’s dissolving body as Howard corners her. She kicks over the acid toward Howard and he falls in the puddle, which also starts an electrical fire. Ignoring the protests of the injured and knife wielding Howard that “You don’t know what’s out there! You can’t run form them!” Michelle escapes into the air duct, dons the suit, and escapes. Outside she sees birds flying, and removes the biomask. However, she spies a tentacled biomechanical craft floating in the distance. The bunker explodes from the fire, attracting the craft’s attention, and Michelle is stalked by an alien creature. As the craft then looms overhead, it releases a green gas, forcing her to put the biomask back on. She takes shelter in Howard’s truck, but the craft’s tentacles pick it up and attempt to consume her. She stuffs a rag into a liquor bottle, lights it on fire and throws it into the maw of the craft, causing it to explode. Michelle drives off, knocking over a mailbox that reads “10 Cloverfield”. On the radio she hears about successful human resistance efforts. Survivors are directed to evacuate to the north, while those able to aid the fight are directed to Houston. Being at a crossroad, Michelle resolutely heads for Houston, where lights are moving above the city and larger crafts loom nearby.

The Witch – Evil takes many forms. New England in the 1630s: William and Katherine lead a devout Christian life with five children, homesteading on the edge of an impassable wilderness. When their newborn son vanishes and crops fail, the family turns on one another. Beyond their worst fears, a supernatural evil lurks in the nearby wood. In 17^th century New England, a man named William is threatened with banishment from a Puritan plantation alongside his wife Katherine, daughter Thomasin, son Caleb and fraternal twins Mercy and Jonas, due to a difference in interpretation of the New Testament. The family decides to leave the church and the plantation it controls and builds a farm by the edge of a large, secluded forest far from the Puritan settlement. Katherine soon gives birth to her fifth child, Samuel. While being closely watched by Thomasin, Samuel mysteriously vanishes from her presence. It is then revealed that Samuel was kidnapped by a witch living in the woods, who kills and uses him to make a flying ointment for her body.

Katherine, devastated, spends her days crying and praying. William takes Caleb hunting in the forest and confides to his son that he traded Katherine’s silver cup for hunting supplies. On the farm, the twins play with the family’s goat, Black Phillip, who, they claim, speaks to them. That night, Katherine questions Thomasin about the disappearance of her silver cup while implying she was responsible for the disappearance of Samuel. After the children retire to bed, they overhear their parents discussing sending Thomasin away to serve another family. Early the next morning, Thomasin finds Caleb preparing to hunt in the forest. She forces Caleb to take her with him by threatening to awaken their father. Their dog gives chase to a hare and Caleb follows on foot, leaving Thomasin sitting on the horse which throws her and knocks her unconscious. Caleb becomes lost in the woods and eventually stumbles upon the disemboweled corpse of his dog. Wandering father into the woods he discovers a moss-covered hovel with a smoking chimney. A beautiful and sexually flirtatious young woman appears at the door and lures Caleb towards her. While passionately kissing him, her hand becomes wrinkled and she suddenly grabs him, for she is actually the same witch that abducted Samuel. Meanwhile, Thomasin awakens and reunites with her father, who is searching for her and Caleb. Katherine confronts Thomasin about taking Caleb into the woods. William reluctantly admits that he sold Katherine’s silver cup.

That night, Caleb is found outside in the rain, naked and delirious from an unknown illness. Katherine suggests her son’s mysterious ailment is due to witchcraft and prays over Caleb. The next day, Caleb suffers a violent seizure and expels a small apple from his mouth. He then passionately proclaims his love for Christ before dying. The twins accuse Thomasin of witchcraft and in retaliation she reveals their conversations with Black Phillip. Enraged, William boards Thomasin and the twins inside the goats’ stable. After dark, the twins and Thomasin awaken to find a hideous naked old woman drinking a white goat’s blood. Meanwhile, Katherine is overjoyed by a vision of Caleb and Samuel’s return. She begins breastfeeding the infant which is revealed to be a black raven pecking at her exposed and blood breast. The next day William finds the stable destroyed, the goats eviscerated and skinless, the twins missing, and an unconscious Thomasin lying nearby with blood stains on her hands. As Thomasin awakens, William is fatally gored by Black Phillip and knocked into a wood pile. An unhinged Katherine blames Thomasin for her husband’s death and the twins’ disappearance and tries to strangle her. Thomasin grabs a nearby billhook and slices Katherine’s face with it and kills her in self defense.

That night, Thomasin speaks to Black Phillip. The goat responds and is revealed to be Satan in disguise, who then takes the form of a man. He convinces her to sign her name in his book, offering the sights of the world and the life she wants to live. Thomasin agrees, signs the book, and wanders naked into the forest with Black Phillip alongside her. She eventually finds a coven of nude women surrounding a bonfire holding a Witches’ Sabbath. The witches begin to levitate as a laughing Thomasin joins them, rising above the trees.

The Cabin in the Woods – If you hear a strange sound outside… Have Sex. You think you know the story. Five college friends spend the weekend at a remote cabin in the woods, where they get more than they bargained for. Together they must discover the truth behind the cabin in the woods. Five teenagers head off for a weekend at a secluded cabin in the woods. They arrive to find they are quite isolated with no means of communicating with the outside world. When the cellar door flings itself open, they of course go down to investigate. They find an odd assortment of relics and curios, but when one of the women, Dana, reads from a book, she awakens a family of deadly zombie killers. However, there’s far more going than meets the eye. In an industrial facility, two technicians are preparing for their day on an unknown operation. Meanwhile, five friends are preparing for their trip to a remote cabin owned by Kurt’s cousin. On the way, they stop for gas and have an encounter with the strange local who owns the gas station. While drinking and relaxing at the cabin, they discover a basement filled with interesting artifacts.

In a high tech underground Facility, senior technicians Gary Sitterson (Richard Jenkins) and Steve Hadley (Bradley Whitford) discuss plans for a mysterious ritual. A similar operation undertaken by their counterparts in Stockholm has just ended in failure. American college students Dana Polk (Kristen Connolly), Holden McCrea (Jesse Williams), Marty Mikalski (Fran Kranz), Jules Louden (Anna Hutchison), and Curt Vaughan (Chris Hemsworth) are spending their weekend at a seemingly deserted cabin in the forest, a cabin recently acquired by Vaughn’s cousin. From their underground facility where they possesses significant technological control over the area in which the cabin is situated, Sitterson and Hadley manipulate the teenagers by intoxicating them with mind-altering drugs that hinder rational thinking and increase libido. They take bets from the different Facility departments (from around the world) as to what kind of monster they want to attack the teenagers and discuss the failures of similar rituals in other nations.

In the cabin cellar, the group finds many bizarre objects, including the diary of Patience Buckner, a cabin resident abused by her sadistic family. Dana recites incantations from the journal, inadvertently summoning the zombified Buckner family despite Marty’s warnings. By releasing pheromones, Hadley successfully induces Curt and Jules to have sex. Attacked by the marauding Buckner zombies, Jules is decapitated while Curt escapes to alert the group. Marty, a frequent marijuana smoker discovers concealed surveillance equipment before being dragged off by one of the Buckners and apparently killed. Later, the Facility workers learn that the ritual in Japan has also ended in failure, ending Japan’s streak of success, and confirming that the American ritual is humanity’s last hope. It becomes apparent that the ritual involves blood sacrifice. \

Curt, Holden and Dana attempt to escape in their RV, but Sitterson triggers a tunnel escape when Demolitions didn’t get the order for it. Curt jumps a ravine on his motorcycle in an attempt to flee and alert the authorities, only to crash into a camouflaged force shield, killing him. Holden and Dana retreat to the RV to plan their next move, but one of the Buckners, hiding within all along, stabs Holden as they are driving away, resulting in the RV crashing and sinking into a lake. Dana escapes and swims ashore and is beset in turn. As she is attacked, Sitterson, Hadley and their staff celebrate her impending death and the successful completion of their ritual, viewing the events from their underground facility. The celebration is interrupted by a phone call from “downstairs” pointing out that Marty has survived. His heavy marijuana use ahs apparently rendered him immune to Sitterson and Hadley’s manipulations.

Marty rescues Dana and shows her to a hidden elevator he discovered under a grave. They take the elevator into the underground Facility, where a menagerie of monsters, utilized by Sitterson and Hadley, are imprisoned. Dana correlates them with the knickknacks in the cabin’s basement and realizes that those items gave victims the opportunity to choose the circumstances that will lead to their deaths during the ritual. Cornered by the facility’s security personnel, she and Marty release the multitude of monsters, including zombies, a werewolf, a basilisk, wraiths, a unicorn, and a merman, among others who wreak havoc and slaughter the staff.

Fleeing further, Dana and Marty discover a temple where they are confronted by The Director. She explains that every year worldwide rituals are held to appease the Ancient Ones, malevolent beings living beneath the surface of the earth, one of them under their own Facility. The Ancient Ones are kept in perpetual slumber through their annual ritual, shown to be unique to the tropes of each region. The American slasher film ritual requires the killing of five young people embodying certain archetypes: the whore (Jules), the athlete (Curt), the scholar (Holden), the fool (Marty) and the virgin (Dana). The order in which intended victims perish is flexible, so long as the Whore dies first and the Virgin survives or dies last. The Director urges Dana to shoot Marty, completing the ritual and thus saving humanity. But the standoff is interrupted by a Werewolf that attacks Dana. The zombie Patience Buckner suddenly appears and kills the Director. Deciding that humanity is not worth saving, Dana and Marty share a joint as the Ancient One stirs, its giant hand emerging from beneath the temple door, destroying the cabin and the Facility.