The Cabin in the Woods (2011)

I’ve been hearing about this movie a lot lately and decided to give it a shot, even though everything about it was screaming to stay away. A group of 20-somethings get into an RV and decide to go stay in a cabin in the middle of nowhere. Generic garbage, right? Yes and no.

The cast is comprised of a bunch of young’uns I don’t know, plus the guy that did Thor. Sigourney Weaver makes a random appearance at the end, but that’s about it. The kids have very stereotypical roles (the slut, the jock, the stoner, the kind of smart guy, and the reserved redhead). Early on, the inklings of a decent plot start to emerge, with some corporate scientist types pulling the strings and acting as “the powers that be” behind everything the kids experience. If the plot had centered and ended with that being what was going on, it would have been more interesting (and more how I thought it was going to be) and a far different movie than it ended up being.

Instead it devolves into a really overblown campy mess of these scientists doing all this to appease some ancient powers or else the world ends. There’s homages to a bunch of horror classics, from Evil Dead to Hellraiser to Hills Have Eyes. Throw in some SyFy looking monsters and some zombies and it just becomes an overindulged mess.

It’s definitely not all bad. There are quite a number of funny bits and dialogue in there, and the gore and killings are pretty well done. If you go into it, expecting a smart horror movie (which is sort of what I incorrectly assumed it was), then yeah you’ll be disappointed. But for what it is: a fun, kind of campy, fairly well-done flick, it’s definitely worth a watch.