The Cabin Movie

Recently, I saw The Cabin Movie at the Vancouver Film Festival. The film directed by Dylan Smith features three couples in search of exciting sexual encounters in a cabin north of the Vancouver. What impressed me so much about this film was the restraint showed by the director in dealing with this very sensitive subject. There is something inherently funny about a film chronicling three couples experimenting with sex with friends, yet the director cleverly plays it straight. He avoids easy punch-lines and instead teases the comedy from the circumstance. Arranging a sex weekend with a group of friends is more complicated than one can imagine. This is not robotic sex with strangers and the characters recognize the inherent dangers. These are three well- defined couples each with a suitcase full of relationship issues. The script is tightly written and the acting is strong. In an era of sexual adventure among couples, this is a timely story. It presents the dilemmas of free sex without moralizing. It was one of my picks of the festival and judging by the reaction of the audience, I think this film could become a sleeper hit in the video rental houses.

The Cabin Movie is certainly not the worst movie you'll ever see, but this is a movie that I found extremely hard to like, and I was severely disappointed as the story sounded extremely promising. A couple invites two other couples over for a little partner swapping / sexual game thing going on. It's gonna be videotaped! And it's going to be fun! Only one of the couples swaps his female companion for a last minute replacement of an absolute floozy and the other couple are still debating on whether or not this is such a great idea. Now, this sounds like it could be a sexy comedic flick, but the whole thing is immediately deflated by the totally unlikable characters that populate this movie. I am sure it's not the actors fault, they're just there, but more of a scripting fault then anything else. You're in with them as the movie starts but by the end you feel you've ended up wishing that you were somewhere else as the characters haven't really grown, but sort of humiliated themselves, and that leaves the audience to move uncomfortably in their seat waiting for the movie to end.

Actually this is a great movie from the plot and performance of the cast point of view but unfortunately it is not realistic.Three couples gathered in the same house for swinging and swapping their partners but there were no swapping except one and they were even in their clothes when having sex(intercourse).None of them fully undressed except Mark(Brad Dryborough) during the movie.For instance Maria (Arabella Bushnell),as host of the party,was in her underwear all the time who actually should undressed first in order to lead others.Dialog was not bad but more nudity and sex scenes should take place in this movie in order to reflect a real swinging party. In spite of this unrealistic scenes,I still recommend to everyone to see it.

I like this movie because the acting of the actors is quite genuine and honest. The actress who plays the role of the floozy (Justine Warrington) delivers an impressive talent as a singer, too. She even wrote and performed one of the songs in the film. The storyline is not bad, not bad at all. Although the film is a low budget one (i guess, because Justine has to do the stills, Dylan A. Smith was a director plus camera operator) it is well put together. For the director Dylan Akio Smith,(he's a Canadian) rising from a gaffer, electrician to producing films, i think he is quite amazingly talented. I hope to be able to see some of his others films.

I'm not sure what the other reviewers were expecting, I'm sure at least one of you was expecting a sex romp and were mad because you didn't get it. I think everybody did a great job in this, portraying a story that would probably be a lot closer to real life if three real couples tried to arrange something like this. You've got the uptight couple, she wants to try it, he doesn't. You've got the nervous host couple who think they want to do it but aren't sure. And you've got the free-spirited couple who find out they might not be as open as they think. The Hollywood version would have 3 beautiful couples banging each other all weekend, I think this version is a lot more accurate. Sorry if it wasn't what you were expecting. Sure it won't win an Oscar for, well anything, but it was okay.