Cabin In The Woods – Movie Review

movie reviewI have seen my fair share of horror movies over the years. That includes the well known, critical acclaimed ones… as well as some really really bad ones. So after hearing and reading, that ‘Cabin In The Woods’ should be a really good one, I was hooked and interested to see it. On the same page I asked myself what this movie could do different? Since I try not to go into spoiler territory, this review may appear a little condensed.

The story could be explained very quickly. 5 college kids plan a trip into the woods. You have the sporty guy, the educated guy, the stoner guy, the sexy blonde bimbo girl and the innocent girl. While they always stay in character you don’t get the impression that they’re stupid. They are just young people. As soon as they arrive at the cabin, and they start to check out the rooms, we notice weird things.

At the same time we have 2 middle aged guys, working in some kind of industrial research kind of looking complex. They are overlooking what the kids do. Every step they do is being recorded and watched. It seems they follow some plan that is going on for quite a while. But there is more that I do not want to go into detail about. Since this would spoil quite a few neat things from the movie.

Without to go too deep into spoiler world, it’s save to say that both worlds will meet up at one point. There is also quite some slaughtering and blood worshipping going on, in the last parts of the film. It was fun to watch how all the things fell into place.

The movie plays with all the typical genre elements. I admit, that a lot of movies tried that before. But from my point of view, they all failed at some point. CitW manages it to make everything that happens in the movie, look plausible in context of the universe, it plays in. A lot of movies try but fail at exactly that. All the characters in the movie are likable. Yes, even the blonde one. The guys in the observation center are great too. The writing for the characters is really good and made me laugh more than once. Yes, the movie has quite a nice humour too.

When the monsters hit the cabin, and hunt down two of the guys, with jamming knifes into their backs, I honestly thought they would die. But no… obviously they don’t even got a fleshwound. Because these guys keep running around like nothing ever happened. That’s the only thing that threw me a bit off. And you could argue about the fact, that this is also part of the ‘playing with the genre’ thing. Aside of that, it’s fun to watch how the movie evolves and unfolds its plot.

When it comes to the ending I’m perfectly fine with it. A friend of mine would have loved to see more of the aftermath. But hey, you have to keep some mystery alive! At least from my point of view. Sequel potential? A tiny little bit. But I personally hope it’s not going to happen.

Ultimately the movie may not be one of the most original one, since it takes all kinds of ideas, that were already there at one point. But it merges all the kinds of genres and ideas to a new combination that still manages it to ‘reveal new things’ to the viewer. A good one, with charismatic actors and nice effects, that doesn’t take itself too serious.

7.8/10

Cabin In The Woods on IMDb

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