Cabin In The Woods

Rating: 5/10 (5 April 2015)

The premise is simple. Five generic college students arrive at an inconspicuous cabin in the woods for a few days of vacation. Unbeknownst to them, the cabin and the surrounding woods are home to evil beings that are dormant ... that is, until the kids find an old book and tape recorder filled with zombie gibberish. The story is set mostly during one night. Dense fog obscures one's vision outside the cabin.
The first-half plot isn't bad. The camera takes the POV of unseen entities, darting here and there. And the kids spend a lot of time exploring the cabin and its cellar, waiting and listening, as eerie sounds put them on guard that something isn't quite right. The music, too, adds to the sinister atmosphere.
But if the first half conveys a pleasantly spooky atmosphere because of what we do not see, the second half's plot plummets to stupidity because of what we do see. No longer hidden, the evil makes itself visible, in the form of nightmarish images and gratuitous gore. The film thus loses its suspense and mystery.
The second-half plot trends repetitive as the same fate befalls one kid after another. And the gore continues to escalate. Nearing the film's merciful end, I started getting a headache, as the gore got progressively more annoying.
The film has no thematic depth. And since the underlying premise presumes a supernatural explanation, we can't apply logic to any story element. Acting is largely irrelevant. The credibility of the film thus lies mostly in sound effects and special effects, which are nicely crafted but over-used. I would have enjoyed the film more if the zombies, or whatever they're called, had been less visible and if the gore factor had been hugely reduced.