Good Work, Zombie Hand!

Rating: 8/10 (3 May 2012)

"We chose," says Dana (Kristen Connolly), the Final Girl in The Cabin in the Woods. As the Final Girl in a slasher film, Dana has arrived at her proper place, the place you anticipate from this movie's start. She's been witness to her friends' terrible fates and is now decoder of the horrific puzzle. In this case, she means that she and her friends—who all decide to spend a night in the titular cabin and who all go in the titular woods.
In other words, Dana's realization that she and her friends "chose" is both her fate and your payoff. In other other words, slasher aficionados know their own places, a point made extra-clear by Scream, though you surely knew it before then: watching a movie when you know the rules means you anticipate what's going to happen, and anticipation—of the victims' terror, their abuse, and their terrible fates—is key to your pleasure. You expect types of victims and monsters, as well as blood and screaming and diabolical violence. You expect kills.
The Cabin in the Woods delivers all this and something else too, a framing device that's established in the very first scene, when Hadley (Bradley Whitford) and Sitterson (Richard Jenkins) head off to work, chatting about the office pool and what they anticipate. Thus the movie, like many movies before it, incorporates a veteran audience to mirror its own veteran audience. They frame a story that is familiar by definition: Dana and her friends are packing for their trip, each arranged according to a limited range of types: Dana's the Final Girl (so designated by her lack of a boyfriend), Jules (Anna Hutchison) is the sexy girl, affiliated with a handsome, jockish, and also book-smart boyfriend named Curt (Chris Hemsworth). He brings along a date for Dana, his new wide receiver Holden (Jesse Williams), and they bring along the requisite stoner, Marty (Fran Kranz), whose fuzzy truth-speaking will not be recognized by the others until it is Too Late.
Their adventure in the woods goes as you expect: they meet the creepy guy in overalls (Tim De Zarn), here named Mordecai and presiding over a last chance gas station, with rusting pumps and a sign that says "Closed." He spits and squints and essentially embodies a warning to go no further, a warning the kids ignore and you appreciate for its combinator's earnestness and mordancy. The kids don't get much that follows, which is, of course, their job. They head to the cabin (Clover's "Terrible Place"), where they settle in for an evening of seemingly transgressive and completely predictable behavior: they smoke dope, play Truth or Dare (which leads to Sexy Girl's display of her gumption when it comes to sex), and wander into the cellar when the door slams open on cue.