There are many reasons to think The Cabin In The Woods is a transformative horror film. It’s funny as hell, smart as sin and if the devil’s in the details, this film is overrun with brilliantly burning demons. But perhaps the most impressive feat achieved by Cabin is the almost never-experienced sense of community that’s being shared by both critics and audiences alike. There’s a deliciously reverent silence surrounding the film’s wonderfully meta plot-twists; an innate understanding that everyone deserves to experience this film in pure, unsullied, and blissful ignorance.
Basically, the first rule about The Cabin In The Woods is you don’t talk about The Cabin In The Woods.
What we can say is that the film, co-written and produced by Buffy The Vampire Slayer creator Joss Whedon, opens with a stereotypical posse, comprised of The Jock (Chris Hemsworth), The Slut (Anna Hutchison), The Nerd (Jesse Williams), The Stoner (Fran Kanz) and The Virgin/Final Girl (Kristen Connolly), making their way to a (SPOILER ALERT) cabin in the woods. Encountering the usual warnings from gap-toothed, Bible-thumping yokels, and amidst the obligatory sexual tensions and drunken antics, they begin to suspect there are sinister forces lurking, which paves the way for some seriously creepy fare.
But thanks to a superbly wry parallel plot featuring Richard Jenkins and Bradley Whitford, all this standard horror material is treated like one of the movie’s ill-fated zombies: it’s hacked at, dismembered and, when the rancid, mangled pieces attempt to crawl back to bite you in the ass, Whedon sets it ablaze. By the end, there’s nothing left but the crumbling, re-contextualised ashes of every iconic horror film; Evil Dead, The Strangers, It, The Ring and the rest.
Not that Cabin ever feels elitist or overly academic. On the contrary, it’s a consistently hilarious, giddy and batshit crazy rollercoaster of frighteningly good fun.
So go, and enjoy it. Just don’t tell anyone why.