Film Review: The Cabin in the Woods

If you like movies about cabins in the pines with secret elevators underneath them leading to a compound populated by busy scientists and IT experts in white shirts and lab coats holding clipboards and viewing dozens of large screen monitors as they work for a government agency mandated to ward off Lovecraftian ancient gods that once ruled the world and are now living deep beneath the earth, by sacrificing every year five college students representing “types” (bad girl, good girl, jock, geek and fool), all done according to a horror movie scenario made familiar by countless variations of Friday the 13^th and Evil Dead 2 but leaving in an element of free will that guarantees horrible fates for all concerned, then you are sure love THE CABIN IN THE WOODS, a too-clever-by-half, genre-referential, winking-at-the-audience-in-an-“aren’t-we-clever?”-manner, so-called horror-thriller filmed in “supernatural” British Columbia.

The biggest shock in the picture is provided by the unexpected opening titles, suddenly appearing in bright red letters that occupy almost the entire screen, accompanied by a violent musical “sting.”

Writer/producer Joss Whedon and director Drew Goddard get it right with the casting of Fran Kranz as raspy-voiced, acerbic, fifth-wheel single guy pothead Marty (the fool). What a riot this guy is! Kranz saves THE CABIN IN THE WOODS from utter predictable unpredictability. He deserves an Oscar nomination, I kid you not.

THE CABIN IN THE WOODS has received so much ballyhoo that to denounce it as trash is almost unthinkable. The overhyped “don’t spoil the surprises” warning is just so much bait to lure the masses into the multiplex. Personally, not for one minute did I buy into the far-fetched premise of THE CABIN IN THE WOODS, which isn’t helped by some of the worst CGI work I’ve seen this side of a Charles Band production.