Kristen Connolly

Fran Kranz

Chris Hemsworth

Jesse Williams

Anna Hutchison

Richard Jenkins

Bradley Whitford

Amy Acker

Brian J. White

Sigourney Weaver

Tim DeZarn

Tom Lenk

Greg Zach

Dan Payne

Jodelle Ferland

Dan Shea

Maya Massar

Matt Drake

Nels Lennarson

Rukiya Bernard

Peter Kelamis

Adrian Holmes

Chelah Horsdal

Terry Chen

Heather Doerksen

Patrick Sabongui

Phillip Mitchell

Naomi Dane

Ellie Harvie

Patrick Gilmore

Brad Dryborough

Emili Kawashima

Aya Furukawa

Maria Go

Serena Akane Chi

Abbey Imai

Marina Ishibashi

Miku Katsuura

Alicia Takase Lui

Jodi Tabuchi

Sara Taira

Alyssandra Yamamoto

Richard Cetrone

Phoebe Galvan

Simon Pidgeon

Matt Phillips

Lori Stewart

Terry Notary

Drew Goddard

Joss Whedon

Jason Clark

Peter Deming

Heike Brandstatter

David Julyan

Lisa Lassek

Monique Ganderton

Anya Colloff

Amy McIntyre Britt

Shawna Trpcic

Krista Bell

Martin Whist

Michael Diner

Kendelle Elliott

Hamish Purdy

Glenn Woodruff

Coreen Mayrs

Patrick Gray

Mary Anne Waterhouse

Jule Baanstra

Nancy Anna Brown

Allan Galajda

Domenic Silvestri

Peter Stratford

Michael Toby

Viva Wang

Aaron Jordan

Jamie Jonasson

Nicole Chorney

Glenn Foerster

Dane A. Davis

David A. Whittaker

Doug Hemphill

Ron Bartlett

Bill R. Dean

Joel Whist

Josh Bryer

Chris Grun

Karey Maltzahn

Brad Minnich

Zeke Morales

Todd Shifflett

Richard Malzahn

Freddie Hice

Scott Nicholson

Kirk R. Gardner

Andrew D. Wilson

Diyah Pera

Sondra Durksen

Catherine Haight

Julie Pearce

Mark 'Blue' Angus

Rick Rasmussen

Geoff Teoli

Brigitte Prochaska

Susan Lambie

Paul Becker

Clint Carleton

Daniel Lindsey

Lauro David Chartrand-DelValle

Tom Reta

Maja Aro

Jeff Sanca

Melissa R. Stubbs

Corry Glass

Marny Eng

Dan Sissons

Mike Szakmeister

Stephanie Flack

Chad Sayn

Marnie Wong

Joy Zapata

Sanna Seppanen

Lisa Leonard

Kandace Loewen

Connie Parker

Gitte Axen

Peter Robb-King

Leeann Charette

Felix Fox

Sarah Graham

Harlow MacFarlane

Holland Miller

Geoff Redknap

Dave Snyder

Kyla Rose Tremblay

Scott Wheeler

Julie Beaton-Pachauer

Maiko 'Mo' Gomyo

Mike Fields

Jonathan Stamp

Rowena O'Connor

Sandy Walker

Natalie Michalchyshyn

Horror

Mystery

The Cabin in the Woods

Lionsgate

Mutant Enemy Productions

United States of America

Andres Gomez

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 have been cherry-picked and are being heavily monitored all the way into the woods by some very (very) high-tech manner of... what? Government agency? It's with these fellows that we visit first, before we ever meet our protagonists; two middle-aged, white collar I.T. types, a little brow-beaten by what appears to be a fairly monotonous job (although it really ****ing isn't) but full of typical office cameraderie and essentially confident in their own competence and that of the numerous other departments that make up this rather large-scale operation. Whoever is watching our heroes/heroines, they're big-time. So, what's happening? To say more would be to start giving things away, but those kids are very deliberate archetypes, placed in a very deliberately typical horror scenario. Because it's an American film set in America, it's called The Cabin in the Woods as is befitting the conventions of God-knows-how-many American horror flicks. Were it a J-Horror set in Tokyo, it would be called The Freaky Long-Haired Schoolgirl Ghost, an assertion ably illustrated in the film itself to great and rather humourous effect.

Decent performances all-round, even the deliberately irritating characters are kind-of likeable. A pre-Thor Chris Hemsworth is particularly good as is Richard Jenkins (Nathaniel "The Dead Patriarch" Fisher from Six Feet Under). It threw me a bit, this film, because in purposely not looking too deeply at what it was about prior to seeing it, I mistakenly thought I was about to watch a seriously scary and effective horror, and this isn't the case at all. It's a slick product with what looks like a decent budget as you'd expect from a Joss Whedon project (in case you've been under a rock somewhere, he of Buffy/Angel and latterly of The Avengers fame) and it's loaded with nods to other horror literary and cinematic classics (The Evil Dead, Hellraiser, The Strangers and HP Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos are all fairly explicitly referenced), but it's not especially gory, it's intentionally funny more often than it's intentionally scary and it's a real thrill-ride, a slice of fun. It's not quite there, but it's a damn site closer to "Horror-Comedy" than it is to balls-out "Horror". It's not perfect by a long way - it instills bags of concerned curiosity in the viewer, but provokes almost zero real tension whatsoever. And late-on a special effects extravaganza treads clumsily into Night at the Museum-for-grown-ups territory. But it remains a great way to spend a couple of hours.

Per Gunnar Jonsson

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 sure has an interesting twist but…it is still a teenage slasher horror movie. The twist could really have lifted the movie but unfortunately this good idea is pretty much wasted in a poor implementation.

Instead of holding on to the surprise it’s spoiled right away with that eagle flying in to the force field (since when did we learn to build force fields by the way?). Another thing that really drags down the film are these utter morons in the control room. If this was really a matter of survival of mankind then you would have thought that it would have been left to professional people and not these jerks.

The movie isn’t all bad though. With the exception of these major flaws it does pass as a decent slasher/horror movie and makes for a reasonably entertaining hour and a half of not too intelligent movie watching. The part nearing the end where all the monsters goes on a rampage is rather fun to watch. I was not very impressed by the end itself though. That was rather uninspired I would say.

Gimly

**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 films in existence, but it was… So. Fucking. Good.

Drew Goddard (who wrote _Cloverfield_) is no stranger to working with Joss Whedon (_Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Avengers_) and my God do they ever make a team. Joss Whedon is my unopposed all-time favourite person involved in the film industry in any way, shape, or form. Which is quite the claim, given my interests. He’s had a couple of fuck ups, and been fucked around a few times too, but all in all, nobody captures me quite the way he does.

I’ll try and aim for not-spoilers, if you watch the trailer you’ll get that this isn’t a typical horror movie. You’ll also pick up on that if you watch the first 5 minutes of the damn thing. I won’t go into the finer details, but let me just reiterate, it is NOT a slasher film. There’s a fair amount of horror, some action, some sci-fi, a bit of fantasy, some short but sweet comedy, a bunch of thriller, a little monster-movie, a bit of homage and a healthy (but not overdone) dose of parody. Joss Whedon tends to do that, his work is usually less in the horror genre and more in the… Genre genre. If that makes sense.

I seem to recall it performing kind of averagely at the box office, but critical reception was fantastic. And rightfully so. And fan-aimed movies as good as this always manage to fall into their cult, so there’s a pretty avid group of people who are super keen on it, too. Again, rightly so. I think the best (as well as most important) thing about _Cabin in the Woods_, is that it pumps some new blood into horror. Sure, it wasn’t 100% original, but then it never claimed to be. At least it wasn’t a sequel or another bloody remake.

Seriously, I hate on remakes much, much less than most, but come on people! This is all rather ridiculous. Imagine if the Wachowskis had said “Hey, we’ve got this great idea for a dystopian, industrial sci-fi type thing called _The Matrix_… Actually, you know what? That sounds like an awful lot of effort. Let’s do an over the top American remake of _The Castle_ instead!” Yeah, sounds like a great world to live in. Fuckin’… Lazy ‘n shit…

Lost track there, anyway! _Cabin in the Woods_! Fuck! Good! Watch that shit! Make up your own mind of course, but I really dig it. There’s something to be said for being fucked up and going with it. I’m sure some people will dismiss _Cabin_ entirely, because it’s so out there. And I’m sure even more people will get pissy about the ending. But if you have no expectations, and just try enjoy the ride, then I think you damn well might.

87%

-_Gimly_