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100By the time the ride is over, director Drew Goddard and co-writers Goddard and Joss Whedon will change course three or four times, nodding and winking but never losing momentum.
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100The Cabin in the Woods isn't merely another "Scream" exercise in self-awareness, or a "Scary Movie" spoof of the same. It's a wickedly smart hybrid mutation, biting the severed hand feeding the genre.
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91It's an exercise in metafiction that, while providing grisly fun, never distances viewers. And it's entertaining, while asking the same question of viewers and characters alike: Why come to a place you knew all along was going to be so dark and dangerous?
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90A horror-movie attic sale is, in essence, exactly what Cabin in the Woods is, an attempt to exorcise the genre of its formulaic possession by stuffing the movie full of its most overused and predictable elements - and then dumping them through clever skewering.
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Apr 12, 201290Cabin in the Woods does what "Scream" only halfway managed, which was to find something new by looking back at the familiar - and at least in Whedon's world, the geeky ones are never first on the chopping block.
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90The Cabin in the Woods is a fantastic poke in the eye of our horror-movie expectations.
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Mar 10, 201290Not since "Scream" has a horror movie subverted the expectations that accompany the genre to such wicked effect as The Cabin in the Woods, a sly, self-conscious twist on one of slasher films' ugliest stepchildren: the coed campsite massacre.
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Mar 10, 201290Drew Goddard's giddily brilliant The Cabin in the Woods has a lot on its twisted mind.
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89The horror-movie clichés form the backbone from which the film's humor and creativity emerge. This Cabin may not be the Parthenon, but it's definitely a place to worship the gods of horror.
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88Cabin is a deliciously devious scare dance that keeps changing the steps until you lose your shit and fall helplessly into its demonic traps.
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88The film's main virtue, a large virtue indeed, is that it does not give anything away before its shockingly apt time.
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88It showcases one of Whedon's greatest strengths: his ability to take previously disrespected genres - in this case the slasher film - and turn them inside-out and upside-down and every which way but loose.
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83It's a film full of clever moments that may at first seem cheeky but come to feel inspired, with a third act (which only a churl would describe) that rises to a dizzyingly heightened level of metaphysics and mayhem.
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80Because the first narrative is so crushingly generic (which turns out to be the point), most of the amusement derives from trying to figure out what the second one is all about. I'm not sure I ever did, but the climactic one-two punch of special-effects chaos and meta-movie chin stroking should have the fanboys trembling with delight.
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80I'm recommending that you rush out and see it, but not altogether because I think it's so totally great and completely works. Quite a bit of it is great, and most of it works, and the stuff that clicks is outrageously entertaining and funny, sometimes with surprising depth. But I also want you to see it so we can argue about what works and what doesn't.
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80At the very least, it's awfully entertaining and for "Buffy" fans, reason to put down the boxed sets and run off to the cinema.
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80Not all of the twists work, but most are self-knowing enough to keep you guessing until its (literally) groundbreaking conclusion.
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80Charmingly, like a throwback to the pre-Twitter age, here's a horror film that's been made with no reasonable way to discuss it beforehand.
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80A super-entertaining, super-slick love/hate letter to horror with a final 20 minutes that's stunningly bonkers.
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Apr 12, 201275Cabin is a meta-horror-comedy mash-up that, at least for two-thirds of its running time, holds together smartly.
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75A pulpy, deceivingly insightful send-up of horror movies that elicits just as many knowing chuckles as horrified gasps.
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75Richard Jenkins and Bradley Whitford are particularly funny in their middle-management roles.
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75Moviegoers looking for a thrill should go into The Cabin in the Woods knowing as little as possible about the film.
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75The movie balances nicely on the edge of meta-horror, with characters breaking free of their assigned roles (in more ways than one) and monkey-wrenching the very urban legend they're dying to get out of.
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75This is not a perfect movie; it's so ragged, it's practically constructed of loose ends. But it's exciting because it ventures so far off the map.
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75The devilishly clever script tries a lot of things. Not all of them work, but it's hard not to admire Whedon and Goddard for the attempts. This is definitely not your standard kids-get-slaughtered-by-zombies motion picture.
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70It's often funny and smart, but seldom deeply involving, and practically never scary.
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70The initial brilliance of the premise is eventually dulled by illogic, the whole thing proves unmanageable and the filmmakers unmanage their climactic revelation with far more zest than finesse. Still, zest counts for a lot, and resonance carries the day.
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70Is it scary? Not especially. But there are enough gory surprises around every bend to keep you laughing/screaming/cringing.
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67The movie's biggest surprise may be that the story we think we know from modern scary cinema - that horror is a fun, cosmic game, not much else - here turns out to be pretty much the whole enchilada.
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63The Cabin in the Woods is pure mechanics, as if the shadowy Dharma Initiative of "Lost" switched agents and found itself at the center of a brain-bending ensemble drama.
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63The Cabin in the Woods, regardless of its many genealogical links to prior Whedon creations, is an ideal Hollywood film in the Age of Pixar: spectacle for spectacle's sake, but infiltrated by intelligent commentary and an atmosphere of generosity and inclusion.
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60However smart and sophisticated this film is, it may disappoint those who, in their hearts, would still like to be genuinely scared.
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60Part "Evil Dead," part "The Truman Show," part "Arthur Christmas"... For horror hounds who love a larf, and those of us who always wondered exactly what that dry-ice stuff that rises out of the forest-floor moss is. A fun ride - but not quite a "Scream."
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50The laughs come easily, the screams not so much. It's as if the filmmakers got so wrapped up in the satire they forgot to include the intense sensation of rising dread that creates all the thrills and chills that are part of the attraction.
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50Novelty and genre traditionalism often fight to a draw. Too much overt cleverness has a way of spoiling dumb, reliable thrills. And despite the evident ingenuity and strenuous labor that went into it, The Cabin in the Woods does not quite work.
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Apr 10, 201250A horror comedy with a structural twist intended to emit an air of being something more, Cabin has an off-putting vibe of cocky self-confidence, a "don't you get it" conviction that it's something special. As with people, it's not a charming quality in a movie.
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Mar 10, 201250Effects work is slick, and Goddard keeps his foot on the accelerator with help from David Julyan's suspense-building score. It's just too bad the movie is never much more than a hollow exercise in self-reflexive cleverness that's not nearly as ingenious as it seems to think.
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38I've seen a lot of rip-offs of "The Truman Show" and a lot of rip-offs of "Scream." I guess I have to give credit to The Cabin in the Woods for ripping off both at once.
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25A creepfest so stupid it makes trashy slash-and-burn epics like "Humans Versus Zombies" and "I Spit on Your Grave" seem like Molière and Proust.
User score distribution:
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Positive: 137 out of 178
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Mixed: 12 out of 178
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Negative: 29 out of 178
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10
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10