Review: The Cabin In The Woods

With the possible exception of romantic comedy, no genre more frequently leaves an audience with that deflating feeling of déjà vu than horror. While its capacity for remarkable, memorable and […]


With the possible exception of romantic comedy, no genre more frequently leaves an audience with that deflating feeling of déjà vu than horror. While its capacity for remarkable, memorable and often gruesome spectacle can make horror cinema a site of boundless creativity, this can leave some films lacking in the scripting, character development and acting departments.

With the established range of stock characters, tropes and ‘rules’ of horror (as alluded to famously in Wes Craven’s 1996 hit, Scream) all pretty firmly embedded in our collective expectations, your average cinema patron wouldn’t expect anything too ground-breaking from a film going by the name of ‘The Cabin In The Woods’. In the first act, Drew Goddard’s film is very much the filmic embodiment of these generic norms.

Five college friends merrily pile into a mobile home and set off for a relaxing break at a log cabin in the remote, hilly backwoods. This Scooby Doo gang of a quintet consists of star athlete Curt (Chris Hemsworth), his pretty, blonde girlfriend Jules (Anna Hutchison), the book-smart and sensitive Holden (Jesse Williams), the loveable stoner Marty (Fran Kranz) and, of course, the relatively innocent yet remarkably resilient ‘virgin’ Dana (Kristen Connolly).

This is where TCITW takes a sudden, hard left turn and we discover just why it generated more buzz than a bothered beehive at this year’s SXSW festival. Co-written by Goddard and Joss Whedon (Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Avengers Assemble), every cliché, archetype and expectation in the horror book is stripped bare, analysed and ultimately satirised as a critical mirror is held up to the genre. Suffice to say it makes for extremely entertaining viewing.

As the five devil-may-care students let their insatiable curiosities get the better of them, it quite naturally becomes apparent that all is not how it seems at the eponymous property. The real challenge for those attempting to write about this film is avoiding ruinous spoilers (an issue that sparked the ire of the fanboy community in their online habitat), and so it’s perhaps best to simply restate one of the film’s various enticing taglines: “Five friends go to a remote cabin in the woods. Bad things happen”.

The Cabin In The Woods brings with it all the horrifying thrills and spills of the very films that it so wittily observes. It’s strange, suspenseful and well-written, even throwing in some gore for the bloody-minded amongst us. Even though at times it perhaps thinks a little too much of itself, it’s sure to be a candidate for the most fun you have at the cinema in 2012.

 

ImageDIR: DREW GODDARD
95 MINUTES
STARRING: KRISTEN CONNOLLY, CHRIS HEMSWORTH, ANNA HUTCHISON, FRAN KRANZ, JESSE WILLIAMS, RICHARD JENKINS, BRADLEY WHITFORD