WAY overpraised

Rating: 6/10 (14 April 2012)

The steup is familiar--a bunch of college kids go to an isolated cabin in the woods. They are the familiar clichés--an oversexed jock (Chris Hemsworth), his sex-starved girlfriend (Anna Hutchison), his best buddy (Jesse Williams), a stoner (Fran Kranz) and a sweet girl (Kristen Connolly). They get there but are watched over by two mysterious men (Bradley Whitford and Richard Jenkins)--but why? I won't spoil it by revealing the twist.
I had high hopes for this. It was praised to the high heavens by critics and the opening scenes at the cabin deliberately (I think) look just like the scenes at the cabin in "The Evil Dead". And (for once) we have good actors playing these clichés and good dialogue (with some humor that is actually pretty funny). But the fun quickly drains away. After you find out what is going on it stops being fun and just gets pretty sick and disturbing. The movie seems to think it's much cleverer than it actually is. This does NOT rewrite the horror genre like "Scream" did in 1996 (although a lot of critics think it does). Also, for a film that seems to praise itself for being so clever, they throw in a REALLY pointless gratuitous topless nude scene which was NOT needed. It redeems itself somewhat towards the last section which gets REALLY REALLY gory and has a cameo by a respected actress (my audience laughed and applauded when she appeared) but it doesn't save the movie entirely. It's not a total loss--it's just not as clever as critics seem to think. ALL the acting is good and you care about the characters--but that's about it. I love horror movies but can only give this a 6.