Various monster items in the visual companion.
Various monster items are seen in the basement of The Cabin, all of them serving as summoning artifacts to the Monsters to be used in The Ritual. The one eventually used by the five college students visiting the Cabin was Patience Buckner's diary, which has a string of Latin phrases that resurrected The Buckner Family as zombies.
All Monsters available to The Facility can be assumed to be associated with an item that will summon them, even real-world beings with no supernatural attributes such as human killers or wild animals. Only a small fraction are shown in the film, while more are referenced in the film's visual companion.
In horror movies, a particular item related to the antagonist is often featured prominently early on in order to hint at the nature of the threat and to foreshadow events to come. The sequence of the victims determining their own fate by choosing from among the monster items pays homage to this trope.
Confirmed Items[]
- These items are known or strongly suspected to summon the following Monsters. Note that most of these items are directly seen in the film's Cellar scene.
| Item | Monster |
|---|---|
| Patience Buckner's diary | The Buckner Family |
| Conch Shell | Merman |
| Puzzle Sphere | Fornicus, Lord of Bondage and Pain |
| Necklace atop a wedding dress | The Bride |
| Music Box | Sugarplum Fairy |
| Fortune Teller Machine | Clowns |
| Unicorn Tapestry | Unicorn |
| Amulet | Werewolf |
| Film Strip | Kevin |
| whistle | killer robot |
| jar of Eau de Sasquatch | Sasquatch |
Unconfirmed Items[]
Not all Monsters have a confirmed summoning item that can be deduced from production notes or crew commentary, so the following is largely fan speculation. NOT all the Monsters are listed, but the ones listed below are examples of how simple an item can be to summon the associated monster.
- Hatchet or gnome statue (Garden Gnome Boy)
- Noose (Klu Klux Klan)
- Owl feather/Owl statue (Giant Owls)
- Millipede fossil (Giant Millipede)
- Dismembered children's toys (Dismemberment Goblins)
- Drums (The Huron)
- A Pair Of Small Stuffed Animals (Twins)
- Urn (Wraiths)
- Alligator Hand Necklace (Giant Alligator)
- Reptile Claw (Reptilius)
- Plastic Bag (The Suffocator)
- Doll Mask (Dolls)
- Bottle of Blood (Vampires)
- Jar of preserved an octopus' tentacle (The Kraken)
- A Jar of Tree Sap (Angry Molesting Tree)
- A Collection of Vials and Tonics in a chest, alongside a Gas Mask and Tonics (Mutants)
- Satanic Bible or other dark scripture (Demons)
- An alien egg (Alien Beast)
- Snake Skin (Giant Snake)
- A Shield (Creature with Patterned Segments of Armor on its Head)
- A scarecrow or pitchfork (the Scarecrow Folk)
- Cat statue or cat toys (Giant Cat)
- Necronomicon (Cthulhu Creature or Deadites)
- Sledge hammer (Man in Transparent Tarp)
- Bat tooth (Dragonbat)
- A Broken meteorite (The Blob)
- Surgical tools (The Doctors)
- Lizard skin or fossil (Giant Lizard)
- Spiderweb (Giant Tarantula)
- Tarot cards, crystals or a love potion (Sexy Witches)
- A book of shadows (Witches)
- Minotaur horn (Minotaur)
- Egyptian dagger or burial item (Mummy)
- Jack O'Lantern decorations (Jack O'Lantern)
- Snow Globe (Snowman)
- Deer Antlers (Giant Deers)
- Biohazard contents (Zombies)
- voodoo dolls (The Reanimated)
Inspiration[]
Monster-summoning artifacts are common in fiction, including books such as the Necronomicon from H. P. Lovecraft's mythos. In horror story convention, these items are often found in basements, cellars, and other hidden compartments of houses, where they are eventually found by the protagonists. In one of the main influences from The Cabin in the Woods, The Evil Dead, not only the Deadites are brought after reading from a cursed book, but the Necronomicon Ex-Mortis\Naturom Demonto is found in the abandoned cabin's basement.