Pull apart your cheeks, insert your head, and you will know "The Cabin in the Woods"

Rating: 2/10 (23 March 2014)

As a person who has spent the majority of his childhood watching horror movies, I am aware that the genre can get a little plodding at times. There are only so many tropes to follow out, and the genre is in constant need of new angles to approach. For every new idea in horror, the drill is that many movies after will borrow and pinch little pieces here and there from the last hot concept, mixed with parts of great flicks that came before. Such is horror; a genre not so much steeped in originality, but in the audacity of individual filmmakers to either one-up each other in craziness, or give a new twist to a concept by approaching it with a left-field idea or humor. Rarely does an original idea come along.
But if you were expecting me to say anything positive about "The Cabin in the Woods" in regards to this observation, go ahead and stop reading right now. I have been very open to many interpretations of horror, but this movie just plain arouses my hatred.
TCITW comes from the school of movies like Scream, a movie I disliked as a teenager in the 90's. The concept is to use the vehicle of the slasher movie(several teens are gradually reduced to one survivor) to poke fun at the horror genre and reveal a few details about its basic concepts and inner workings. Also, there is a plot-changing twist midway through that changes the entire tone of this movie from a slasher to a much broader critique of horror in general. While Scream has a decidedly slasher-centric view, this movie further funnels the entire horror genre into a larger concept that is supposed to serve as an observation about why we watch horror.
This movie is self-referential to the point of self-destruction. It so blatantly flaunts its "breaking the fourth wall" ethos that it forgets to build a first, second, or third wall. The basic plot would probably be a pretty decent idea if it wasn't so laden with the obsession with dissecting the horror genre. It mugs and winks so hard at you that it has the flavor of a YouTube video where someone just goes "I'm so cute" into the camera over and over. Even a fairly good action sequence for about 20 minutes toward the end can't save this turd.
I think the makers of this movie are out of touch. This movie smecks of contempt. It is as decidedly ersatz as a person wearing eyeglasses without lenses, who winks at you and repeatedly says, "Guess what, these glasses have no lenses". It seems to lecture you that you should know better, as if you didn't know all this about horror before this shitty movie came out.
I think the thing that kills me the most about TCITW is that it shows a complete lack of sincerity. I don't particularly like Scream either, but it was made with a good amount of tongue-in- cheek humor by a director who actually defined some of the greatest tropes in horror.
TCITW is like a jealous douche who looks down their nose and says "it's all been done", but never really has a clue what's to be done next. I would much prefer a genre romp with a few flaws than a movie that just derides horror for tools to cackle at.