Wednesday, April 18, 2012

CABIN IN THE WOODS: A GREAT HORROR MOVIE FOR PEOPLE WHO LOVE HORROR MOVIES

Cabin in the Woods is a fantastic horror movie that sat on a shelf for three, long years when MGM went bankrupt. As a result it languished in a semi-forgotten state kept alive only by people like myself who knew about it and have waited patiently for it's release. After a thankfully dead option of post conversion 3-D, it has come to the theaters on Friday the 13th no less and has lived up to every expectation an avid film goer could have.

Written by fanboy demigod Joss Whedon, who also has the highly anticipated Avengers movie coming out in a few weeks, and directed by long time TV director Drew Goddard, this film monster mash up is thrilling, funny and scary, sometimes all at the same time.

The film has the typical set up. Five, somewhat stereotypical archetypes, gather together for a vacation to a cabin in the woods. We have Dana (Kristen Connelly), the "virgin," Curt (Chris Helmsworth), the jock, Marty (Fran Kranz), the stoner, Jules (Anna Hutchinson), the "whore," and Holden (Jesse Williams), the egghead all on their way to an evil dead like cabin in the middle of nowhere.

Once there, in true evil dead fashion, they accidentally raise a family of inbred zombies who proceed to kill them off one by one. That in and of itself would hardly make a great movie as we've seen it a thousand times before. What the kids don't know is that the whole operation is being monitored by a some sort of government operation who have manipulated the entire situation for some unknown reason. And that is where it gets really interesting.

It would be heresy to spell more than that without destroying the picture, but know that Bradford Whitley and Richard Jenkins, as two of the government workers overseeing the project, provide some much needed humor to an otherwise dark film and add an extra layer of WTF is going on. Safe to say, no one will see the ending coming which is not the typical cookie cutter ending seen in almost every major picture nowadays. No this one has giant brass balls which will haunt you on the ride home.

This is a must see for horror fans. Go see it today

4 stars out of 5