The ultimate experience in mindf***ing terror and hilarity.

Rating: 10/10 (11 November 2012)

Every once in a blue moon a movie comes along and blows your mind. The Cabin in the Woods is that movie.
Most horror movies are cannibals. Coprophagic cannibals, to be precise. They eat up genre conventions and clichés and crap them back out for filmmakers and the audience to consume. What we end up with is the same regurgitated turds with slightly different stinks. To be fair, there are movies out there that play up horror clichés and still manage to be plenty entertaining. Insidious, Hatchet, and Sam Raimi's Drag Me To Hell come to mind. Those films are the minority however; most modern horrors are uninspired turds.
On the surface, The Cabin in the Woods seems like just another one of said turds. The movie synopsis is this: five archetypal college students (the jock, the nerd, the stoner, the slut, and the virgin) decide to take a trip to a cabin in the woods for a fun-filled weekend of beer, partying, and sex. Once they finally reach the cabin, they stumble upon something in the basement that they shouldn't have and promptly unleash hell upon themselves. If this synopsis reads like the setup to countless horror films, it's because it is supposed to. Those who are familiar with writer-director Drew Goddard and writer-producer Joss Whedon's genre-bending work in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel series, however, know better.
One of the reasons why The Cabin in the Woods is so good is that was written by individuals that have a deep love and understanding of the genre. Whedon and Goddard know the utility and appeal of horror tropes, but also see how they have stagnated the genre. Stupid teens that go into the basement when common sense tells them not to, stupid teens that decide to split up when the group is attacked, stupid teens that decide to go out to investigate what that strange noise was The genius of Cabin is that it takes these rules and assumptions about how the protagonists behave in horror films, hacks them up, and then assembles them into an eerily familiar but ambitiously unique beast.
In keeping with horror tradition, The Cabin in the Woods delivers the plenty of nightmarish monsters and gruesome kills. The movie defies tradition, however, by providing characters that are actually have personality and sympathetic. In a genre where the characters exist solely for the purpose of getting butchered for the audience's delight, Cabin has truly achieved something special. Each member of the gang gets their chance to shine and subvert their respective stereotype but it's ultimately the stoner, Marty (played by Fran Kranz who also starred in Whedon's TV series Dollhouse) who steals the mainstage show. Behind the scenes however, it's the two technicians Sitterson (Richard Jenkins) and Hadley (Bradley Whitford) who bring the most laughs.
Cabin also manages to be absurdly hilarious while still delivering the scares. The only other recent film that can make that claim is Sam Raimi's Drag Me to Hell, his spiritual successor to the seminal first two Evil Dead movies. Whedon and Goddard understand something that most people don't – that horror and comedy share a good deal in common. They make or break themselves depending on the setup, can get away with portraying the most ridiculous and offensive things, and are specifically calibrated to get a visceral reaction.
Horror and comedy aren't just limited to pushing people's buttons. Good horror and comedy can sometimes give them something to think about it. The term "meta" has used a lot to describe The Cabin in the Woods. It's a half-accurate label because while the movie is definitely a critique of horror but it doesn't have to resort to being self-referential to make that statement. The problem with "meta" films is that they typically ruin one's suspension of disbelief by being self-referential and deliberately poking fun at itself but Cabin's main conceit (which I will not spoil for you) itself is a perfect metaphor for horror film and allows the movie to critique the horror while still remaining serious and believable itself. Cabin takes a mirror and points it at the audience to ask some serious questions but desensitization to violence, manipulation, the importance of narrative to human culture, and more but it does not make the movie a mere vehicle for the message or trivialize the story and characters themselves. The commentary and content are one.
If there is any flaw to this movie, it's that it isn't that scary. There are a few "boo" moments and definitely plenty of blood and gore but you're probably not going to find yourself peeking through your fingers. The Cabin in the Woods gets a pass though because it does everything else right. It might not make you leap out of your seat but it will certainly keep you on the edge of it. It's entertaining, smart, thought provoking, funny, original, and most importantly, memorable, things that are hard to say about most other mainstream movies, not just horror.
Like the tagline says, you think you know the story, but really, you don't know squat. Go watch this movie, have a laugh and a scream or two, then get your brain matter splattered over the theater wall. You'll love it.
I promise.