A group of college kids go away to a remote cabin, only to fall prey to a massive game.

Rating: 9/10 (12 December 2015)

When I was little, often or not I would be cooped up in my bedroom, rays of sunshine pouring through the blinds, with an open tub of action figures to keep my attention. Sprawled on the floor would be Skeletor, Michelangelo with his orange bandana, a 12-inch Godzilla, Emperor Palpatine with clip on lightening bolts, and a lazily played with Stretch Armstrong. Constructed around them would be a partially fictionalized Lego city, playing off the layered buildings of New York and Chicago (Gotham City and Metropolis respectively). Tossing these miniature idols around with a child's unforgiving carelessness, Skeletor and the rest of the dirty dozen would be engaged in a pieced together recreation of a battle my innocent eyes saw last Saturday morning. Like my fantasy world recreations of yesteryear, Cabin in the Woods plays like a piecemeal childhood meta-mash-up, deriving its tongue in cheek humor, stereotypical character archetypes, and laid out horror from an all encompassing love of a well worn genre.
Beginning like most estrogen fueled teen slashers, Cabin in the Woods juxtaposes between the mid-academia antics of a group of friends heading out to a secluded cabin with that of two lab technicians, played with gleeful adoration by Richard Jenkins and Bradley Whitford. Little is known of the two and their motives, but producer/writer Joss Whedon, a veteran writer of teen clichés and a key player in the resurgence of meta-horror surrounds us with enough characters to keep our curiosity and questions satiated until the final frame. As the teens begin to uncover the unsettling faults and horrors within the cabin, we are given more pieces to the meta- puzzle, allowing us to bare witness to the sights and sounds of a film that teeters on the brink of self-referential overload. What allows Cabin in the Woods to continue on without losing its mystique and fascination is Whedon's mindful appreciation for the horror genre in multiple mediums, paving the way for a film that balances scares with blood-stained black comedy like a cup of coffee shakily delivered to its final destination.
When the film introduces us to its respectively titled setting, Sam Raimi's Evil Dead immediately stands tall as the referential lifeboats captain. Soon after though, Cabin in the Woods begins filling itself with horror passengers from other vessels, causing one to cringe as water begins flooding over. From your standard stalker in the woods affair such as Friday the 13th, Dead and Buried, and Wrong Turn to Fulchi's Zombi, Carpenters The Fog, and Cliver Barker's Hellraiser, the fondness for decades of terror become evident in Goddard and Whedon as they craft a film on the crafting of the perfect horror scenario. One by one the kids fall prey to the cabins elaborate operating system as fog pours out of the ground, hormone induced gas creeps into the teens bodies, and the manipulation of the perfect unmade fright flick begins to lay waste to the perfect weekend getaway. Watching all of this unfold is something true horror junkies will revel in, while those who are less aware of the genre it holds in high esteem may slip under the cracks, finding Cabin in the Woods to be a glorified mockery of the yet-buried reality genre.
Picking apart Drew Goddards film is akin to over-analyzing every piece of horror cinema that has graced the video racks and late night cinemas over the years, giving one a fistful of material to uncover and piece together. There is much to admire in what Joss Whedon has crammed into a 90 minute horror tribute, yet without the countless chapters of film history already established by the classics there wouldn't be much of a skeletal structure for the film to hold itself up, sagging like the rotting flesh of one of its zombies. However, it's a film that deserves attention and praise for its multilayer meta use, taking a well-worn sub-genre and flipping it on its three heads and giving us a ride well worth the ticket price. If Cabin in the Woods won't turn you on to the multiple mediums and genres it references (and references well), then horror may very well be lost on you for good.