Scary, hilarious, unpredictable and unique.

Rating: 9/10 (26 June 2012)

It boggles my mind how crap like That's My Boy is granted a major theatrical run in Australia, yet a horror-comedy as inventive and entertaining as Cabin gets relegated to small, art house cinemas who thankfully save it from a straight-to-DVD release. The mainstream audience would've flocked to this Joss Whedon-produced flick like seagulls to hot chips; it's scary, extremely amusing and, best of all, intriguingly unpredictable. With tongue firmly in cheek, writers Whedon and Drew Goddard (who also directed) deliver a cracking meta-narrative that piles on twist after turn after OMG!-moment without ever being convoluted and always landing on the right side of fun. The dialogue is whip-smart and hilarious – a speakerphone conversation had me in tears – and the acting is well above par for a movie in this genre. The five teens (including Chris Hemsworth) who spend the weekend in a cabin in the – wouldn't you know it – woods, are knowingly stereotypical and oddly distinctive all at once, whilst Bradley Whitford and Richard Jenkins wipe the floor clean with their utterly perfect and highly memorable performances as two straight-faced office workers in an unusual line of business. Throw into the mix a smattering of enjoyable violence, a neat A-lister cameo and a bonkers climax worth the admission price alone, and you've got the biggest film-distribution fail in Oz for 2012.