A discussion at the BBFC, of sorts.

Fight Club is a brilliant movie. Ah, g on, it is- it's bitterly funny, Brad Pitt is astonishingly good and Edward Norton punches Jared Leto's face in. Top entertainment. I only watched it last week, though, because it is an eighteen. It is an eighteen not because of extreme vioence (apart from a few punches thrown and a bit of explosions here and there) but because it features three frames of a erect penis.
Now, Cabin in the Woods- a fantastic film, by the way- that's violence. From redneck zombies eviscerating hapless teens, to a merman feasting on the face of a lead character while shooting blood out of it's blowhole like a particularly questionable Redtube video, to agiant  scorpion fully furnished with buzzsaws, it has literally every kind of violence you could imagine implied or actually shown. It also has a positive depiction of drugs, tits, and someone really going at it with a stuffed wolf. And it's a fifteen.
Is it perhaps the tone of the violence? Because Fight Club is pretty serious. Meat Loaf with tits, for the love of God, dead. Not an ounce of fatuosity (?) about it. But then, amongst all the obvious Cenobite homages and killer ballerinas, Cabin in the Woods someone kills themselves on camera- puts a gun to their head and commits suicide, right there. A few moments later, a brief shot showed a group of people tied up, gagged, and being doused in petrol by a sinister bunch of masked psycopaths. That is, to say the least, a little disturbing. So the tone obviously isn't the issue.
I tell you what I think it is- it's the director. Consider the scene at the BBFC: "Right, chaps, we've got this film, right, and Josh Whedon was involved, right? It's a pretty violent, and I was thinki-"
"Him who did Buffy? Ah, put it through as a fifteen. I love that show".
"Right, chaps, we've got this film, right, and it was directed by David Fincher, right? It's not too bad, except for this bit with a co-"
"Hang on. Him who did Se7en?"
"Aye."
*amidst an ocean of screams and repressed memories* "I don't care if he's directed the fucking Muppet movie. No man who did that scene with that....*gestures to crotch with hand held out to resemble a blade*...will ever make a film that is less than an abomination. The creepy bastard. How did we let that one slide? I wish I could love again."
Because I've run out of steam, I'll leave you with this- the new Muppet Movie, directed by David Fincher, starring Morgan Freeman voicing Fozzie Bear and Brad Pitt as Kermit, full songs, show tunes, dancing puppets, and Paltrow's decapitated head. It'll happen.