Entertaining and smartly written and delivered

Rating: Null/10 (5 November 2014)

I'm no great fan of horror movies and in particular I don't really like gore, so although I heard good things about this film, it never really appealed to me. I'm not sure why I ended up watching recently but I was very pleasantly surprised by what I found. Although the film opens in some sort of industrial/clerical banality, very soon we are in familiar territory as a group of college students head off to a cabin in the woods for a fun weekend. Despite the warning from an old man in a gas station about the dangers ahead, they continue up to the dark old cabin, where they find some weird things – although perhaps not as weird as what lies ahead.
The plot is bang on the genre tropes for a reason, and it does it very well. It is almost ironic that as a 'cabin in the woods' horror, it is pretty effective in how it works even though it is mostly meant as a pastiche of the genre. True enough it is not particularly scary but it is gory and effective in the way that so many of these things are. The contrast with the men in the offices is nicely played on many levels. I really enjoyed the linkage to modern horror films from different cultures, and the passive and humorous way in which they went about their job. I'll not say too much more than that, because although it an aspect of the film that unfolds from the start and throughout, my enjoyment was greater for not knowing anything.
The delivery of the film is good. In the horror sections it gets the tone right, but also balances it very well with dark humor – with neither detracting from the other. The cast are very good at what they do. The genre horror cast not only hit their marks but hit them well; Hemsworth and Connolly play their roles well, while Williams and Hutchinson have less to do but are still good. I enjoyed the Ash-referencing Franz a great deal. Meanwhile Jenkins and Whitford in particular do a good job with their side – delivering with good comedy but convincing work. The special effects have a good quality of looking trashy but still effective – very b-movie.
The Cabin in the Woods is not as good as you have heard – it is one of those films that catches a lot of people by pleasant surprise, and as such it probably got a bit more hype than it could support; however it is an enjoyable film which cleverly plays with the horror genre while also delivering a good genre film at the same time. The comedy works surprisingly well and in the end it is a nicely written and delivered film.