My Whole Life Is A Complete Lie!!!

Rating: 9/10 (4 July 2012)

This will be the first movie review I write, and I only do so simply because I feel that this movie deserves as many accolades it can get. Especially since it was begrudgingly given cinema screen time by the distributors, who really wanted it to go straight to DVD. In fact, the distributors were so reluctant, that they gave it permission to air at ONLY one cinema in Melbourne, which is ridiculous! We had to drive an hour to get to that one cinema.
I love watching movies, and even more so, I love horror movies. I live in hope of being able to watch a decent horror movie, but these moments are far and few in between. I think the last time I was scared in a movie would have been when we went to an international film festival and saw Ringu. And so I was super excited to find out that Joss Whedon made a horror movie.
Up front, I will confess, I am a HUGE Joss Whedon fan so I probably do have a certain bias. However, even if Joss had no part in it, I would have still loved this movie to death! It has one of the most creative and imaginative plots I have seen in a very long, long time.
This movie takes all those typical horror movie clichés, that we are all familiar with (teens, alcohol, drugs, creepy old guy, cabin, woods, etc) and all the horror movie rules we are aware of (don't walk backwards, don't separate from the group, etc) and makes you comfortable, thinking you know exactly where it's going, because you've seen it all before, right? WRONG!!! What it actually does, is make you reference and question ever other horror movie you've ever seen, and wonder if this is what was actually happening in the background!
I actually did say out loud "My whole life is a complete lie ...!" as the story unfolded before my eyes. There was no point in time where I was not surprised, and I am a horror movie veteran.
It has every single imaginable horror in it, all your favourite beasties, the old and new, and yet, despite the terrible things that are happening to poor hapless humans, Joss and Drew are still able to bring levity to any situation and make you laugh unexpectedly.
HOWEVER, herein lies the problem - I don't think that this should actually be classified as a "horror" move. When asked about the movie, I really struggled to describe it as a horror move, because it wasn't really about the horror, just as Zombieland wasn't really about the zombies. Yeah, there's gore, and blood, and stabbing, and monsters, but that's all circumstantial. I think this is where people have been misled and this is probably why there are so many 1-star angry ratings.
Personally, I could have easily given it 10 out of 10 stars, but to be fair, to balance out my undying devotion for anything from the Whedonverse, I felt I had to deduct one star.