The Cabin in the Woods

The whole post-modern, meta take on horror movies has been with us for a while, at least since the first Scream movie, and they're so common now that it's almost welcome to see an unironic horror flick. But The Cabin in the Woods is so meta that it's mind-bending, and it's very clever premise is really the selling point of the film--the actual dicing and slicing is beside the point.

Directed by Drew Goddard but from the mind of Joss Whedon, the film takes all the classic horror tropes and suggests that they are there for a reason--the very future of Earth hangs in the balance. Thus we get five types of college kids who visit an isolated cabin deep in the woods--The Jock, The Scholar, The Whore, The Fool, and The Virgin, who must be killed last (if at all).

I won't spoil the surprise of this film, because watching it unfold is the best reason to see the movie--watching it a second time would be a waste of time. Suffice it to say that the adventures of the students are interspersed with scenes of white-collar technicians monitoring them on cameras, and occasionally interfering (such as turning up the heat or spraying pheromones to get two characters to have sex), and betting on how they will die.

These office workers have some recognizable actors, such as Bradley Whitford and Richard Jenkins, and Sigourney Weaver pops up later. The cast of college kids were mostly unknown to me, though Chris Hemsworth, who I have trouble distinguishing from his brother Liam (I think this is the one that married Miley Cyrus) is the Jock. Notable as the pot-smoking Fool is Fran Kranz, who along with Amy Acker, also are featured in Whedon's Much Ado About Nothing.