	 Most importantly to this scene’s shift is the acting, both Fran Kranz and Kristen Connolly embody their archetypes well and show the evolution of fear of their characters appropriately. Throughout the scene Marty keeps his mildly lighthearted yet paranoid, burnout character strongly established, with dry humor behind his reintroduction, explanation of survival, and even when jumping into the elevator. When finally he sees the “tooth fairy” the audience sees an actual glimpse of pure horror on his face as he finally tries to understand something he cannot. This is opposed to the acting on the part of Dana who so far has been simultaneously the most three and one dimensional character, nothing remarkable, but someone to root for, the archetypal “final girl. Everything stays entirely consistent with her up until her moment of revelation. She sees the “demon lord” and the puzzle box he is holding, her face goes from the confusion and fear that her and Marty share, to the shock of realizing what she sees in front of her, to what may be called a resigned understanding. A single moment of clarity. She now knows someone has been controlling them this whole time, someone has manipulated their friends into dying and lets it out in a futile burst of anger. Both characters experience these shifts in portrayal at the same time, with their backs to each other, both morphing as the story morphs, realizing the true deeper horror of it all. These cues are what brings the film out of the traditional horror slasher genre and allows the audience to see the meta level commentary on horror as a whole. The actors in this moment know they’re essentially in a horror film, a position that many a viewer has considered over the years, now come to life. Leaving the audience in a position to consider not just this film, but the greater works of the horror genre as a whole, as a basis for this scene, the reactions of the characters, and the meta reactions of the audience as things driving the deeper horror and tension that have come to a boiling point here in this singular moment. Everything not just in the film, not just in the acting, or setting, or lighting, but in the genre of horror as a whole has lead to this very moment.
	The scene is a literal revelation on the part of the main characters and also acts as a stylistic gap between the differing horror methodologies of the film, from the conventional to the postmodern. The choices of lighting and it’s shifts, the deeper symbology of the setting, and the dramatic shifts in acting help emphasize that the movie has become something more than the slasher being run by some larger organization that it started as. The Cabin in the Woods is a film about horror, and while its initial framework is that of a horror film, the evolution of it from something traditional to something psychological and subversive is fundamentally part of what it is. This scene is the moment that the audience now knows that subversion of the genre and the  horror of what a horror film is, are going to become front and center.
