The Cabin In The Woods Trailer
An affectionate, extremely knowing spoof that also manages to be a full-blooded, rip-snorting scary movie, this Joss Whedon production should have horror fans levitating off of their seats with bliss. Kicking off with the best title card of the year, the film follows a standard assortment of college kids (jock, stoner, cheerleader, bookish Final Girl, etc.) as they head to the creepy, cobwebby location of the title. Meanwhile, a pair of blasé white-collar drones (the wonderful Richard Jenkins and Bradley Whitford) trudge through what appears to be just another day in the office. These plotlines are not altogether unrelated. Those averse to spoilers can be forgiven for applying earmuffs from here on out, but one of the beauties of Whedon and Drew Goddard's script is how it manages to continually up the ante, revealing the basics of its plot in the very first scene and then proceeding to run amuck within the boundaries it so gleefully establishes. (If you think you've got it figured out, just wait five minutes.) Although scoring major points for ambition, debuting director Goddard does occasionally struggle with the film's swings between laughs and screams, with a couple of promisingly scary scenes blunted by badly cued punch lines. In addition, as with many Whedon projects, some viewers may find this teetering on the edge of glibness, with every character sporting a full arsenal of almost too-clever wisecracks at the ready. Any such nitpicking, however, should be obliterated by Cabin's completely hellzapoppin' final act, which mashes-up seemingly every supernatural trope in existence into a coherent, outrageously plasma-soaked validation of the genre. In conclusion, if you have any interest in horror movies at all, you gotta see this. --Andrew Wright
