Homage till it hurts

Rating: 7/10 (20 April 2012)

Co-written by BUFFY's Joss Whedon this is a high-tech new take on the Friday THE 13TH scenario. The new - or not so new - element here is that the horrors visited upon the five hapless occupants of a spooky lakeside cabin are being manipulated by a team of technicians in a vast laboratory beneath them, not unlike the people controlling the island in LOST.
The 'controllers' include a couple of faces familiar from THE WEST WING and (appropriately) SIX FEET UNDER. There's even a cameo from Sigourney Weaver playing a variant on her AVATAR character.
Joss Whedon has a lot of fun mounting an elaborate deconstruction (I blame Wes Craven for this!) of the last 10-30 years of horror movies. THE EVIL DEAD, THE THING, THE SHINING - almost every schlock-horror you can think of is referenced. The (ludicrous) exposition at the end is - almost - a throwback to the Denis Wheatley era (does anyone, apart from me, remember him?).
The zombie assaults on our hapless cabin crew are as visceral as anything in the SAW series or its many imitators; the frontier into 'Torture Porn' is approached if not quite crossed. Great pace, super effects, lots of make-you-jump moments (not too many make-you-scream moments: that's harder to bring off today), but THE CABIN IN THE WOODS is like an extended Tribute Show. It doesn't have that vital spark of originality that gave, say, DRAG ME TO HELL its extra "zing".