Director: Drew Goddard
Cast: Chris Hemsworth, Bradey Whitford, Fran Kranz
Certificate: 15
Trailer

Worried the mere mention of The Cabin in the Woods could spoil the surprises? Head this way for a 100% spoiler-free review of Cabin in the Woods, involving robots, Danger Mouse and Morgan Freeman. (This review is 97% spoiler-free.)

"The lambs have passed through the gate. They are come to killing floor," recites Richard Jenkins' redneck harbinger of doom as a truckload of teens pass by his home. That's the kind of knowing dialogue you can expect to hear in Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard's horror-comedy-post-modern masterpiece. That and words like "virgin" or "blowhole".

Less a film about teens dying in the woods and more a total deconstruction of the genre, Drew Goddard's movie is a smart beast; in between making you jump and laugh, it successfully explains the reasons behind every stupid decision made by every dumb character in every horror movie you've ever seen.

But more than just cracking jokes, Goddard and Whedon have a real respect for the audience, balancing the laughs and the scares in equal measure. Almost every scene undermines the one before it, but the witty script still escalates the dramatic tension up to a final reel that works as both a serious character study and a hilariously absurd slice of terror. Imagine if The Muppets made The Evil Dead. That's how good it is.

It helps that the visual effects and production design are so good, spattering blood and spraying hormones all over the cabin walls, not to mention the best use of a wolf since Game of Thrones. The cast (particularly The West Wing's Bradley Whitford) are also superb, with Fran Kranz's stoner Marty stealing the best lines by working out what's going on before the others.

To say any more would be unfair - even though the surprise twists start appearing within the first five minutes, to spoil it really would, well, spoil it. So instead I'll just say this: go and see The Cabin in the Woods this Friday. And be sure to use our Cabin in the Woods De-Spoilerificator to avoid learning any more about it.

VERDICT

A gory geek-fest that should play to both lovers and haters of the genre.