Stop Me If You've Heard This One Before...

Rating: 6/10 (28 September 2012)

SPOILER FREE (mostly)
Cabin in the Woods is a movie who's success depends largely on how much you pretend the core joke is funny. For me, It was funny as in smirk funny, but not really LOL funny. For some people, this will be a riot. For others, a stale shaggy dog story. I'm a little in the middle.
On the surface this is In the Mouth of Madness meets Army of Darkness. I don't think it's as threatening a premise as the former or as charming as the latter, but it does burn 90 minutes with some occasionally creative touches. Maybe this is more Evil Dead meets Buffy. Is it SAW meets Blade? Or is it Event Horizon meets Big Brother? All of the above. That's the whole point. The "monster's ball" of mayhem sequence is probably the most riotous fun of Cabin in the Woods, but the rest of the movie doesn't quite hold up. The ending especially is pretty flat. The rest of the film builds so much to it and it feels like Goddard and Whedon forgot that in referencing so much other material, they really need to write something good of their own. The whole thing feels as disposable as a Big Mac container. There was a better last 2 or 3 minutes instead of what/who they threw up there before the credits roll. Or they ran out of money, which is a possibility.
You could do worse, but I've already heard this joke a few times and it was better told and more entertaining when Kevin Williamson called it Scream.