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Stabbin' Fever

Directed by Drew Goddard ("Cloverfield") and co-written by Goddard and Joss Whedon (the "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" series), "The Cabin in the Woods" is not a parody, like "Scream." Nor does it play with the audience, like "Funny Games". It is a hybrid genre of Sci-Fi and Horror (Die-Fi?). "Friday the 13th" meets "The Truman Show." Whether this is a cinematic evolution or mutation depends upon your taste for blood.

The opening scene is in a way one of the most shocking, in that it seems to be from a different movie than the one advertised. Two technocrats, Sitterson and Hadley (Richard Jenkins and Bradley Whitford), are in a military observational facility. They embody the banality of evil as they joke and complain while going about their unsettling job. Their job, as is quickly revealed by display screens and control panels, has everything to do with a certain cabin in the woods.

The setup is familiar: five college friends head out to a cabin with the expected plan of debauchery. The standard Horror cliché characters are represented: Dana the Good Girl (Kristen Connolly), Curt the Jock (Chris Hemsworth), Jules the Slut (Anna Hutchinson), Holden the Nice Guy (Jesse Williams), and Marty the Stoner (Fran Kranz).

These characters are not any more fleshed out than you would expect, with the notable exception of stoned seer Marty. Even Chris Hemsworth ("Thor" himself!) as alpha male Curt does not make much of an impression. It is bad guys Sitterson and Hadley who, though not sympathetic, are sadly the most recognizably human.

The majority of the movie's surprises are more funny than frightening, in the way that a puppet show, even one with monsters, is still a puppet show. And once you've seen the strings, they can no longer suspend your disbelief. Still, there are enough legitimate scares in the movie for the average Horror moviegoer.

Only at the end does "The Cabin In the Woods" not know what to make of itself, as a Pandora's Box-worth of nightmares are released and the audience's capacity for surprise is drained. There is a cameo appearance that, while an affectionate nod to the Sci-Fi gods, is also a gratuitous sacrifice.

Turning the conventional horror story on its head (while conventionally cutting off its head) "The Cabin In the Woods" is a little bit of everything and yet not quite like anything you've ever seen. Fortunately the whole is greater than the sum of its dismembered parts.