Curiosity Shops and The Cabin In The Woods (SPOILER ALERT!)

The Cabin In The Woods movie poster

    I have finally entered the world of digital arts. I did my very first homework assignment as an invitation to a make-believe curiosity shop. On my postcard, I used Adobe Illustrator to draw apothecary jars full of strange, happy little creatures swimming in colored fluid. After a few weeks of frustration and several You Tube video tutorials, (I have never used Illustrator before), I presented my work to the class. My favorite comment was, "I love how this looks like a little kid did it." Lol
   My very sweet and tactful art instructor said my postcard reminded her a bit of the movie The Cabin In The Woods. I told her I hadn't seen the movie because I'm a big chicken. She assured me it wasn't that scary. My friend Shawnna and my brother both urged me to watch it since it has my all-time favorite actress in it, so I gathered up my courage and some popcorn and I did it. That was quite an entertaining movie! I first recognized Bradley Whitford, who played a major role on television's The West Wing. His character was always a little annoying to me on TV, so I was okay with him being one of the evil businessmen in this movie. Early in the film, I was totally freaked out by the tobacco-spitting Vietnam Vet with a bloody eye at the run-down gas station, but then I was laughing heartily at the scene where they put him on speaker-phone in the control room. Humor and terror in the same film? Nicely done, Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard. 
   I have one technical comment about the foreshadowing scene where an apparent golden eagle screams and then flies into a force field. That scream is from a red tailed hawk, although the movie industry constantly shows images of eagles making that same noise. (I know this is inaccurate because I share a building with a bunch of fish and wildlife professors.) 
    Chris Hemsworth makes a hunky jock (God I love the Hemsworth brothers!) and I love the "virgin" character Dana (played by Kristen Connolly.) Near the end, when The Director of the whole horror scenario reveals herself (Sigourney Weaver!), Dana starts to protest that she, in fact, is not a virgin. "We work with what we have," explains The Director. 
   The scenes of werewolves, ghosts, monsters, zombies, ghouls, gargantuan bats and snakes, etc. all being held in small glass cages to be released at the will of the controllers was pretty original. It seems many of the monsters were from past movies, but I couldn't be sure about all of them. And that was the link between my curiosity shop postcard and this movie - containers full of all sorts of creatures. Thank you, art teacher, for even loosely associating my work with this fun movie. What a compliment!

   And here is a short clip of an actual red tailed hawk screaming: