Directed by Drew Goddard
Written by Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard
Release Date: 13 April 2012
Running Time: 95 minutes
Editor’s Rating: 4 out of 4 middle-aged white men cursing at adorable Japanese schoolchildren


It’s break time again at Normalsville college or wherever this movie is based in. Five friends have decided to spend said break at a cabin in the woods owned by one of their family members or something. Who cares? It’s a classic slasher flick setup with no frills.

Except I left the first part of the film out, where two guys driving a golf cart through a very huge factory-type setting complain about their marriages and troubles at the office until the title slide smashes into focus. What could these two disparate events have to do with one another? Welp, it’s what makes this movie so fun to watch.

Cabin in the Woods reminds me of another Giggleween favorite, Tucker and Dale vs. Evil, for its ability to at the same time dissect comically and praise relentlessly the scary movie genre. That’s not to say that Cabin and Tucker are the same movie, however. Cabin takes a more detached approach, where the main analysis is from the outside of the main actors, which makes for a much more spectatorial experience, but the watchability of the movie doesn’t suffer for it. In fact, it makes Cabin funnier than Tucker and Dale by comparison by reveling in its detachment and making some ruthless jokes at the expense of people fighting for their lives. It’s kinda sick, but hey - it’s a scary movie, folks. They’re kinda supposed to be that way.

Even so, the side cast laughing at the main cast ends up getting theirs in the end in a very unexpected turn of morality for the genre, but not so much for the movie’s creator. Joss Whedon is a writer/director/huge geek with a huge cult following, known for making classics nerd fare such as the new Avengers films,Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Firefly, among many, many others. He’s become so well-loved because the characters he writes have a consistent humanity to them, often peppered with a biting and frank sense of humor. That’s certainly on display here as he quite obviously ribs a genre he has loved for decades.

In the end, all hell breaks loose, more literally than figuratively, and those who’ve survived this twisted tale sit back and go down with the ship, so to speak. It’s actually a great metaphor for how one feels at the end of this film - so much crazy stuff has happened, it’s time to just relax and take it all in, knowing you’re never going to look at scary movies the same way ever again.

**I watched this film via rental. Don’t let little kids see this, it’s irresponsible. Worse, it’ll spoil ‘em on scary movies. I was not compensated for this review.**