The Cabin In The Woods is the movie every horror nerd wishes he could make, but only a master like executive producer Joss Whedon could actually pull off. It’s over-the-top and employs every cliche in the book; and it pulls back the curtain on all those other horror films to show a world that’s snarky and tongue-in-cheek, but also completely terrifying. Director Drew Goddard makes an amazing debut with this film that winks at the audience the entire time, but doesn’t sacrifice a moment of genuine commitment to the seriousness of its intentions.

It’s nearly impossible to write about this movie without spoilers, but I’ll try (I’ll warn you later when I drop the major giveaways). But as you can gather from the trailers, a stereotypical group of college students gets away to a cabin in the woods. There, they are hunted down by evil things. But they soon realize that they are just puppets in some plot being controlled in a bunker underneath the cabin.

The performances are all fine, but by definition, they have to be a little self-aware campy. The college students lose some of the best scenes to the actors… well, I can’t even tell you, seeing it is half the fun!

I’ll say one more thing: the movie is really smartly written and structured. Obeying some basic rules of sci-fi (and sorta by extension, horror), Whedon and Goddard set up a world of very strict rules and guidelines at the beginning, and it is wicked fun watching that order get slowly blown to hell.

{SPOILERS AHEAD. SERIOUSLY, MEGA SPOILERS}

Ok, if you’ve read this far, I’ll assume you saw the film already.

Pretty crazy, right? Weren’t Bradley Whitford and Richard Jenkins as snarky evil bureaucrats the best part? And the Merman? Hilarious.

But it did annoy me that in a movie that seemed like it was trying to tie up all the loose ends, they didn’t really explain, “WHY?” Marty seemed to ask the question pretty clearly- if the gods want a human sacrifice, why not just do it clean and quick? I guess the implication is that they like watching people get “punished,” which still doesn’t explain why they couldn’t do it some easier way like all those civilizations shown in the opening credits. And why do the people have to choose their own fates? And how could those little Japanese schoolgirls have possibly fulfilled all of the required roles? And if Dana really believes the world is ending, how could she just shrug off that humanity has it coming? Come on, just push Marty over the edge, now that you see it’s real.

But most of all- and here’s the biggest thing I have to just dismiss to creative license- why, oh why, if you have a prison full of every horrible creature ever dreamt up, why would you create a single button that releases all of them at once, and then put it in an unmanned guard booth in a busy lobby?

Maybe they can explain that in the sequel. Once they make fun of the fact that they found an excuse to have a sequel.

(By the way, here’s an awesome screen grab of the whiteboard in the film listing all of the monsters.)

Did you see The Cabin in the Woods? What did you think?

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