Movie Review: The Cabin in the Woods

This week, Papa Kenn reviews one of two must see movies by Joss Whedon this year…THE CABIN IN THE WOODS!

Review Transcript:
First and foremost: if you have not seen The Cabin in the Woods yet and plan to, stop the video right now and go see it. I’m not kidding. I do my best to avoid spoilers like the plague, but almost anything I can say about this movie may be a spoiler to some degree. If you plan to see the movie, avoid trailers, reviews, and jerkface friends that love to spoil perfectly good movies before you get to see them. All you need to know is this: It’s good. Really good. If it wasn’t worth seeing without spoilers, I wouldn’t go through this trouble to remind you to TURN THE VIDEO OFF NOW.

Alright, The Cabin in the Woods. What can I tell you about this movie? Very little actually. The truth is that the movie relies so much on an element of surprise for your first viewing that to discuss it in detail will ruin the movie, especially for those of you that didn’t heed my warning to stop the video.

Co-written by Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard, it stars Kristen Connolly, Chris Hemsworth, Anna Hutchison, Jesse Williams, and Fran Kranz as five college friends that take a trip to a secluded cabin in the woods where spooooooky stuff starts happening! But wait, there’s people at computers in a secluded location? What the –?

Since you’ve obviously seen this movie already, you already know what happened so let’s converse about how it went…

“Ooooh, that one part, you remember that? YES! And then they- and after that- but THEN-! And then those fugly looking- WHOA! Obvious gambling addiction. And then everything just- [screams]! BOOM! Unicoooooorn!”

In all seriousness, Cabin in the Woods is very well done and very much worth your time. It acts as a horror movie with science fiction elements, as well as an homage and parody of the genres all at the same time. It’s obvious that Whedon and Goddard had fun with this. Imagine sitting around with your friends, thinking of ideas for a horror movie. Take all those crazy ideas, and put them together in one (mostly) cohesive movie and you have what Cabin in the Woods brings to the table in spades!

The third act is where the movie can fall apart for some people, because there is so much chaos that breaks out, you risk losing track of what is actually happening. The ending itself also runs the risk of being “a little too much”, but this will depend entirely on your personal experience. I loved it, my wife liked it.

So yes, go see this movie. It is absolutely worth your money every bit as much as The Avengers apparently is according to my friends in Europe and Australia. What the hell, Hollywood?

I give The Cabin in the Woods 8 out of 10.

I’m Papa Kenn, and I’ll see you next review.