First things first – despite what its ad campaign has led you to believe, Joss Whedon’s (Dollhouse) The Cabin in the Woods is a comedy, start to finish. It’s not, however, a brain-dead Scary Movie rehash, nor is it a revolutionary, genre-bending milestone.
No, The Cabin in the Woods is simply a pleasant little film with a few clever twists. Equal parts black comedy, 1980s slasher parody, stoner flick and office comedy – you’ll just have to trust me on that last one – the movie will be a roaring good time for horror fanatics. For everyone else, The Cabin in the Woods should still be a great way to spend an afternoon at the movies.
Without giving away too much, the movie appears to follow a standard gore-fest setup. Five college students – each a stereotype in their own way – travel out to the titular cabin to party.
Obviously, death ensues.
To explain the plot beyond that would be to ruin the fun of this intensely self-aware movie experience. However, the first five minutes give a pretty good indication of what’s really going on. Though the ad campaign put a lot of effort into inflating the secret of the cabin in the woods, the film itself seems to hope the audience is smart enough to piece together the secret for themselves.
That being said, The Cabin in the Woods manages to poke fun at classic horror movie tropes without sacrificing scares. In one scene, co-writer and first-time director Drew Goddard includes a jump-scare that mocks the genre’s over-reliance on the technique while still frightening the audience. The movie’s hilarious and action-packed final 20 minutes is likely to have horror fans chatting for weeks.
The Cabin in the Woods only misses out on one trope, and that’s gore. The body count in the film is absurdly high and there are plenty of creepy monsters, but for a film so intent on poking fun at horror, there’s precious little on-screen mutilation.
There are buckets of blood all throughout The Cabin in the Woods – especially in those last 20 minutes – but too many deaths happened offscreen or without much visual inventiveness.
Still, this is a small complaint when so much of the movie is laugh-out-loud funny. The continuing balance between horror and comedy – similar in tone to Drag Me to Hell – makes the film a joy to watch.
VERDICT: A darkly comedic parody of the horror genre, The Cabin in the Woods is perfect for horror fans and haters alike.
berman@umdbk.com
