In the pantheon of YouTube series that analyze and comment on film, the work of CinemaSins has always appealed to users’ most base instincts. Their long-running, wildly popular “Everything Wrong With…” series is designed to both humorously point out the overlooked flaws in classic films and rejoice in the carnage of a cinematic train wreck. The chance to be catty and nit-picky about a movie you love or hate or hate to love is an enticing one, but the problem is that that’s not what any of these videos are doing. In fact, the series could be more accurately retitled “What If Someone Was Willfully Obtuse About This Film’s Plot, The Writer’s Intention, And The Process Of Filmmaking Altogether?” But that doesn’t have as nice of a ring to it.
In his ongoing “Everything Wrong With ‘Everything Wrong With’” series, YouTube user bobvids gives the folks at CinemaSins a taste of their own medicine by combing through their most egregious videos and pointing out their poor attempts at both comedy and analysis. We’ve celebrated these critical deconstructions before, but a recent look at CinemaSins’ deconstruction of Cabin In The Woods shows just how pointless their format has become. They start the video saying they understand how “wink, wink” the movie is and that it’s commenting on horror tropes, but then proceed to spend the next 18 minutes pointing out horror tropes as if they are flaws in the movie.
“CinemaSins routinely negates the internal logic of films for cheap laughs or quick nitpicks,” says bobvids in a concise summation of this series’ fatal flaw. The creators of CinemaSins claim to be engaging in some sort of satire of film criticism, but in order to enjoy the humor of the “Everything Wrong With…” series, you have to turn your brain off to such a degree that you are barely even aware what movies are, let alone what would make a good one. One shudders to think what a film designed to the specifics of CinemaSins’ tastes would even look like.