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| Released: |
2012 |
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| Genre: |
BLACK COMEDY
MONSTER
HORROR
COMEDY
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| Origin: |
US |
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| Length: |
95 |
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MIXED Reviews
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| The end result is an admittedly uneven piece of work that does seem as though it'd benefit from repeat viewings. |
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| (David Nusair, Reel Film Reviews) |
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| Though there are plot holes in the elaborately concocted scenarios, The Cabin in the Woods gets points for the twists and turns that come along with its sly wickedness. |
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| (Claudia Puig, USA Today) |
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| As a take-off on genre convention it's amusing, even if as a horror movie it proves rather mild. |
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| (Frank Swietek, One Guy's Opinion) |
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| There is a scholarly, nerdy, completist sensibility at work here that is impressive until it becomes exhausting. |
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| (A.O. Scott, New York Times) |
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| Though it has the potential for real greatness it settles for ultimate audience satisfaction, which is pretty close to greatness anyway. |
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| (Katey Rich, CinemaBlend.com) |
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| A massively entertaining, awesomely inventive twist on the traditional 'teenage kids go to a spooky house in the woods' genre that falters in the final reel, when things get too bizarrely excessive. |
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| (Dave Golder, SFX Magazine) |
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| Goddard and Whedon's tweak old-hat formulas with playful good humor, especially in the film's latter third, when things go terribly awry and an "army of nightmares" proves uncontrollable even for Steve, Richard, and their shadowy superiors. Moreover, their setup proves an initially canny, if somewhat obvious, commentary on the way filmmakers — here symbolically embodied by Steve and Richard, a pair of wisecracking cogs in the machine whose concern for their victims pales beside their obligation to duty and base desires (like Richard's wish to see a scenario involving a Merman) —reductively manipulate their material in order to deliver basic, predictable drama. The joke, as it were, is that horror filmmakers embrace tired narrative standards as a means of appeasing powerful unseen forces (i.e. the audience) that will revolt if not satisfied in preordained ways — a thematic thread that turns out to be shrewd, as far as it goes. Unfortunately, that's not quite far enough, since The Cabin in the Woods's subversive streak only amounts to upending its familiar paradigm by empowering its protagonists and, eventually, having them revolt against pigeonholing and death via a nihilism that never quite rings true. More problematic, however, is simply that this modus operandi, in which routine blueprints are first followed and then overturned, winds up interfering with actual fear. By calling direct attention to its scenario's phoniness, The Cabin in the Woods follows its villains' lead by reducing its characters to mere pawns in a critical-theory game in which their survival or demise is something to be anticipated (since we're implicitly asked to "figure out" how the film will screw with our expectations) rather than dreaded. |
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| (Nick Schager, The House Next Door) |
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| However 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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| (Peter Bradshaw, Guardian) |
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, Anna Hutchison 
