Smart yet Dumb

Rating: 8/10 (9 April 2014)

OK. Enough of the artsy, fartsy Euro-drama stuff. Time for some good old-fashioned genre cinema of the horror pastiche variety. Whilst this may be directed by Drew Goddard it has the grubby finger-prints of Joss Wheedon all over it. Drenched with more genre in-jokes, post-modern and post-Scream horror references than you could shake a severed hand at Cabin in the Woods plays it's cards close to it's chest but it's love of genre proudly on it's sleeve.
So where do we begin without being suitably spoilerific. The setup is 5 young, dumb and of varying degrees of beautiful college types head off to the eponymous cabin in search of a weekend of fun in the flora and fauna (No, I don't see the attraction either). However, they're being watched before they even get there. There that's all I can say without giving anything away.
So what do we have here? Essentially, this is a live-action feature length episode of Scooby-doo for grown-ups (except without the talking dog. And that's the rub. Everything here is knowingly pastiche and stereotypical. The cast all fulfill fixed roles: the hunky-jock, the babe, the last-girl nerd, the stoner and the geek. The twists are twisty. The jokes are funny. The knowingness is er... knowingy. The scares unfortunately aren't really scary but I'm not sure they're supposed to be.
You see this homage/ pastiche/ parody/ whatever sticks so closely to conventions that it's hard to react to a scare you've seen done a thousand times before. But... and it's a big one... was it entertaining? Yes, big smartly dumb fun which is not a bad return for minimal brain investment.