The Cabin in the Woods

Hilarious and frightened: shaken, not stirred. Great movie, one of the best in this "genre" for quite a while.

Finally got around to The Cabin in the Woods. 8/10, great fun. A Joss Whedon-(co)written (also co-written and directed by Drew Goddard, who wrote Cloverfield) take on an old horror staple in which 5 stereotypical teenagers (an academic, a jock, a stoner, a slut and a "nice" girl) venture out into the woods for a dirty weekend. It's no spoiler to say that these unfortunate young naïfs appear to hav...

This is another one of those movies where I cannot understand why so many people give it so high scores. Sure it’s not a really bad movie but, personally, I found it only moderately good. I’m not sure whether the movie was intended to be scary or funny or both. It wasn’t very funny though and only moderately scary. It has been presented as a not-your-usual-teenage-slasher-horror movie. Well, it s...

**The following is a long-form review that I originally wrote in 2012.** Jesus Christ. What just happened to my brain? I was worried that _Cabin in the Woods_ was gonna be a letdown, ‘cause I had built it up so much in my head, and it seemed such a ridiculous concept that it would have been nearly impossible to pull off flawlessly. And maybe it won’t go to join the ranks of my favourite film...

*The Cabin in the Woods* (2012) attempts to deconstruct traditional slasher tropes, but stripped of any real suspense or dread, it ends up feeling largely hollow. The underground facility controlling the scenario is meant to add a layer of mystery, yet it only succeeds in removing any real stakes or tension from the characters' survival. Rather than building a grim, atmospheric narrative, the plot...