Perfect for the right kind of person

Rating: 8/10 (13 September 2013)

Before watching The Cabin in the Woods, you must bear two things in mind:
1. This is not a pure horror film. Like the Scream franchise before it, this is the kind of movie that tries to function as both a genre film and a parody of the aforementioned genre. It is not scary, but it was not meant to be. Plus, if I were to judge a horror film solely on whether or not it genuinely scared me, then I could count the number of successful horror movies I've seen on my fingers.
2. This is co-written by Joss Whedon, and whilst it is directed by Drew Goddard, it is very much Whedon's film. If you're not a fan of his particular brand of humor, you'll have a very tough time sitting through The Cabin in the Woods. The majority of the negative reviews of it can be attributed to this, especially those found on this website.
With that out of the way, let's talk about how much I adore this movie. It's beautiful. It's fantastic. It's the best horror film I've seen since Shadow of the Vampire. I positively love The Cabin in the Woods; in the last twelve months, I have watched it four times, tying it with Black Dynamite for the movie I've seen the most in a year (which I suppose gives you a pretty good idea of what my sense of humor is like).
The premise seems like the same tired movie we've seen in the horror genre too many times since The Evil Dead came out: five college students travel to a decrepit hovel in the middle of nowhere to "get away from it all". There, they proceed to drink, get high, and have sex until they find some macguffin (usually an old book, as is the case here) that contains jumbled Latin that raise some form of evil, in this case, a family of undead Rednecks hellbent on murdering all of the students in various brutal ways. But here there's a twist: the whole thing has been rigged by a secret worldwide organization set up to protect the world from being destroyed by the Elder Gods by presenting them with specific blood sacrifices.
Herein lies the beauty of the film: the dumb things done by the five young adults have been set up by the organization to make them more suggestible. The requisite promiscuous blonde, for example, is actually a natural brunette who has dyed her hair blonde with a dye that has been chemically treated to make her dumber. On top of that, the inclusion of the giant, shady organization allow for the best scenes in the movie. The employees make the snarky commentary for us, and the funniest bits come from how routine these awful events are to them. They could not be more bored with the fact that five people are being picked off one by one by zombies.
None of his is spoiling anything, by the way- the very first scene takes place in this building. You might have been fooled, as I was, into thinking that the trailers gave away the twist. They certainly did not. Nor will I, but I will say that the last thirty minutes get very, very weird. Again, this explains why I'm so fond of this film: there was a time, not too long ago, when horror movies were not only encouraged to be as bizarre as possible, but were expected to be so. It was a lovely time, when even the crap could at least be considered fascinating. Those days are- alas- over, and in its place has sprung up an era of dull, gray, un-creative horror films. For all the gore they heap upon us, most modern horror films have completely forgotten to be interesting. But out of the ashes like a particularly insane phoenix rises The Cabin in the Woods. A film that boldly goes where few horror movies have gone in the last fifteen to twenty years: completely off the rails. And. It. Is. Glorious. The last half our of this film is wonderfully demented, throwing everything they can think of at us, eventually leaving the least amount of room for a sequel that a film could possibly leave in its wake. It's a welcome change of pace from the boring mob of pointless sequel bait.
It's a truly wonderful thing to behold. That's enough gushing on my part*: go see it.
*No pun intended