Clowns and zombies and werewolves, oh my!

Rating: 8/10 (31 August 2012)

Two babes (Kristen Connolly and Anna Hutchison); two hunks (Chris Hemsworth and Jesse Williams); one stoner (Fran Kranz); a weekend in a creepy old cabin by a lake: sounds like all the ingredients for a typically gruesome teen horror, doesn't it? Well, that's precisely what Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard want you to think, except that there is absolutely nothing 'typical' about this film.
The initial set up will be familiar to most, but with the early introduction of a group of sinister scientists keeping tabs on events at the cabin (via some sophisticated surveillance equipment), it soon becomes apparent that things aren't as they might at first seem. As the film unfolds, Whedon and Goddard seize every opportunity to play with the conventions of the genre and mess with their viewers' expectations; the result is a whole lot of demented fun, something that I can only describe as 'The Evil Dead meets Lost'.
To give away anything further about the plot would be to ruin your enjoyment, so I'll keep schtum and leave you to discover the secrets of The Cabin In The Woods by yourself. Suffice to say that the film delivers all of the standard horror movie clichés (a dark cellar full of bizarre objects, sex in the woods, a creepy gas station attendant, etc.,) but what it does with them takes the film into refreshingly new horror territory where the standard rules of the genre simply do not apply.