Movie Review Monday - The Cabin in the Woods

It’s just an assumption that with any kind of horror movie I’ll be flying solo, because Chika is supremely uninterested in having the stuffing scared out of her. She’s already jumpy enough as it is.  J 

The Cabin in the Woods

So, as a horror movie, Drew Goddard and Joss Whedon's The Cabin in the Woods opens as many horror movies, with the main characters preparing themselves for the journey to the slaughter. Who will make it out alive? Will anyone? Who will die first? Will horror movie protocol be followed?

Well The Cabin in the Woods is like a thinking person’s answer to horror. Just as The Matrix was the thinking answer to SF. To be perfectly honest, I wasn’t really all that frightened by the movie. I actually found myself more in the place of having sympathy for the main characters. That’s a positive accomplishment right there.

It’s interesting in that The Cabin in the Woods both embraces and lampoons the horror genre, while at the same time establishing itself as a true genre bender. It obeys some of the established tropes of the horror genre, but then tweaks them enough that they feel fresh. There are also a number of hat tips and nods to the horror movies that have come before.

Below, the preview, but if there are any minor spoilers in it, I accept no responsibility.

Overall it was an extremely satisfying movie experience. If you don’t like horror, well then this is definitely not the movie for you. But if you like horror, and like thinking about what makes you tick and why you get scared at horror movies, then this is the movie for you.

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4.0 / 5.0

Cast list (courtesy of Wikipedia)

• Kristen Connolly as Dana Polk
• Chris Hemsworth as Curt Vaughan
• Anna Hutchison as Jules Louden
• Fran Kranz as Marty Mikalski
• Jesse Williams as Holden McCrea
• Richard Jenkins as Richard Sitterson
• Bradley Whitford as Steve Hadley
• Brian White as Truman
• Amy Acker as Wendy Lin
• Sigourney Weaver as The Director/Game Setter