Genius

Rating: 9/10 (23 September 2012)

The Cabin in the Woods is just the kind of horror movie that has been sorely missing for years. The horror genre tends to play it too safe. There's the slasher era, the torture porn era, and now we're suffering through the awful lost footage era, unfortunately the zombie TV fad never really made it to the movies. Horror and comedy has often been combined and the result has usually been embarrassing. This movie has a bit of comedy and zombies and just breaks through these subgenres to create something fresh and unique. I've been waiting for a movie like this, a movie in the spirit of The Return of the Living Dead, a movie that doesn't take itself too seriously, but respects the audience.
We initially meet some 60s style scientists in some large facility who are taking part in some sort of international contest, the only contenders left are the US and Japan.
Suddenly we switch to a group of horror-movie-stereotypical kids. The guy who goes everywhere with a football, the guy who goes everywhere with a bong, the slutty blonde, the pure girl, and the nerdy guy. They're going for a road trip to a cabin in the woods. On the way they meet the stereotypical backward gas station attendant who warns them. Once they get there it all seems nice and fun enough until they go to the cellar, find all sorts of creepy objects among them a book and start reading incantations in Latin from it. Then one of the scientist in control pulls a lever to release the Buckner family- a family of zombies. The zombies go after and kill some of the kids in gruesome ways.
When only the virgin is thought to be left, the entire staff at the science project celebrates their victory over Japan. We also get hints of what is behind all this. But it turns out the celebration was premature. The remaining kids not only escape the Buckner family but also make it into the science facility and what they've find there is just wild.
The Cabin in the Woods successfully combines plenty of elements/references from other horror movies into something new and unexpected. It succeeds in all its different aspects. The horror element is very well done, with the truly scary zombie family. And these zombies look and act the way zombies should. They don't look like people with some pasty mascara on and don't run around like toddlers on a sugar high. The look more like 80s Italian zombies, the best kind. Skinny, rotten. Well except for a big rotten zombie. The funny bits are truly funny, and our dopey guy gets the funny lines and he sure delivers them well. Acting all around is excellent. Then there is a crazy fantasy aspect to the movie as well as a more serious mythology to it that is interesting. And of course the scientists add a bit of deception and conspiracy. While a sequel would be difficult to make, I sure wouldn't mind some prequels.