The Cabin in the Woods

7/10
Pros: A clever satire on its own genre with many twists and curveballs.
Cons: No conventional scares, if that’s what you’re after.

Reading a basic synopsis or even looking at the movie poster of The Cabin in the Woods will instantly give you the wrong and most inaccurate idea of what’s to unfold in this twisted horror movie that turns out to be both a satire and celebration of the genre the film fits into.

Written by Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard (the latter in his directorial debut), The Cabin in the Woods contains cleverly put together and unexpected twists that make it almost compulsory not to go into too much detail about the quickly advancing plot.

The opening scenes depict two completely different sets of characters. The first scene introduces us to the middle-aged Sitterson and Hadley (respectively played by Richard Jenkins and Bradley Whitford) in their everyday suits and swapping banalities at what appears to be an ordinary workplace.

The next few scenes introduce us to a quintet of stereotypical and attractive teenagers: Dana (played by Kristen Connolly), Curt (Chris Hemsworth), Jules (Anna Hutchison), Marty (Frank Katz) and Holden (Jesse Williams) as they embark on a trip to Curt’s cousin’s vacant cabin in the woods - which as veterans of this genre will understand, never quite works out as well as planned. As they arrive and settle in, we recognise predictable props and locations that would provide a field day for a horror-buff with a tick-sheet. There’s the predictable creepy guy that they run into at the petrol station. The secluded cabin is eerily decked with haunting works of taxidermy. And there’s even a lake - which we guess will become the location for the predictable horror scene that’s ever repeated in mundane horror films.

But mundane and predicable The Cabin in the Woods is not. As an intoxicated game or truth and dare leads the quintet into the basement and we gradually become more acquainted with Sitterson and Hadley (remember those support-type employees we met in the first scene?), we learn that The Cabin in the Woods is actually a cleverly written nerve-jangler that’s more of an allegory than a scream-raising gore-fest.

I can’t reveal too much at the risk of spoiling the film’s well-thought-of curveballs and its clever nod to horror films’ finest conventions. The concept behind The Cabin in the Woods is both disturbing and imaginative and is revelatory of its genre’s clichéd and foreseen turn of events. It’s scary, but not in the conventional horror sense. I might have just said too much.

94 minutes.
Released: 13th April 2012.

By Jennifer Tate.
Twitter: @JennieTate