MOVIE REVIEW - Cabin In The Woods

Cabin In The Woods is among the strangest movies you will see this entire year.

In short, it's the story of 5 college students that go off on an ill-fated trip to one of the groups cousins' cabin deep in the woods. They are hoping for a weekend of drinking, partying, swimming and more. They find out that they are going to get anything but what they had been hoping for. One by one they start getting picked off in typical slasher movie gory fashion. Then you start to slowly learn that there is much more in play here. It's not going to be your stereotypical teen, slash, skin, and sex fest.

Seems that our characters are in the middle of some kind of sick reality show thing, that is being controlled by some company, or entity that we really don't have any real understanding of. As the movie flies along you learn more about what is really the reason for all this, and you start to get a sense of the real story. In the end, this is creative. Plus, it's all done tongue and cheek, with an underlying sense of humor that dresses this thing up nicely. They keep you on the hook nicely and let you slow burn to the eventual answers that you do start to crave. Well done.

OK, that is where I'll stop. Even with is sly motives, fun effects, humor and well written script, this is still plenty violent. In the end, extremely bloody and certainly isn't going to thrill Nana and Pappy if they want to go to the movies with you. But this flick identifies its core audience and plays right to it. Yes, it's a slasher flick, but it is a cut above. In the end, you do walk out feeling like you've gotten your money's worth, if for no other reason, you've never really seen this story told this way before.

A Cabin In the Woods. Highly inventive, and not the same old same old.