Good job, zombie arm!

The woman and I went to see The Cabin in the Woods last weekend. Perhaps you’ve seen the trailer? It’s the one where it starts out looking like just another slasher flick, but then a bird crashes into an invisible wall of future-technology and explodes into a fireball. Maybe there’s something more to this…

Since I love cheesy slasher flicks, the interest was already there for me. But then there’s the fact that there’s a whole other level there that we don’t really know anything about, and also it’s written by Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard? Effin’ sign me up, man! I did read a (very convincing) review in the paper on the Friday too, which at that point was just preaching to the choir.

The Cabin in the Woods was even better than I’d hoped for, and might even beat out Drag Me to Hell as my favourite “horror” movie. If you’ll recall, I really liked Drag Me to Hell. I’d have to watch them both again, but regardless, they’re both amazing films, and I heartily recommend them both. That’s a little too straight to the point though; let’s talk a little more about The Cabin in the Woods.

The movie is played off in the trailer as a pretty generic slasher flick, where four sexy teens and Topher from Dollhouse head off to a creepy, secluded cabin in the woods for a weekend getaway. Does that sound like a million other movies? Yeah, a little.  But there is a second plot! It involves professionally-dressed men (and Whiskey from Dollhouse!) in some kind of fancy complex monitoring and ever-so-slightly controlling the fates of our cabin-goers. It’s not a spoiler, because it becomes apparent that this is happening within the first half-hour of the film.

Eventually the stories truly intertwine, and we see that they’re two sides of the same coin, equal parts of a bigger picture. This is still sounding a little generic, but there’s a lot of subtext here, and the whole movie is really one big deconstruction of the horror/slasher genre. But all pretension aside, what matters at the end of the day is that The Cabin in the Woods is hilarious. Sometimes in a tongue-in-cheek way, sometimes ironically, and most of the time very blatantly.

This is a movie about making fun of other movies, and it is a beautiful thing. You know all those terrible [Genre] Movie parodies that are terrible and should be forgotten from human history? The Cabin in the Woods is exactly what those movies wish they could be. It is poking fun at many, many other movies, but not doing it with an endless stream of references and fart jokes. The closest thing to a reference in this movie is… ah, I don’t really want to spoil it. But I will say that there are a couple short scenes that will leave Hellraiser fans grinning. Anyway, The Cabin in the Woods is funny and very smart, but it’s not inaccessible, which is what puts it head and shoulders above pretty much every other parody ever.

The Cabin in the Woods even spends a lot of time satirizing the people who go to the kind of movie it’s ripping on. Yeah, me. And that’s cool. There’s an element of reality TV parody here too, and I found it to be much more entertaining than the other movie doing that, The Hunger Games. But that’s another story entirely.

So again, The Cabin in the Woods is great. Go see it, and be ready for copious amounts of hilarity and blood. Also a unicorn.