The Cabin in the Woods (2011)

The Cabin in the Woods

IMDB rate: 7,1

Genre: Supernatural

Starring: Chris Hemsworth, Fran Kranz, Richard Jenkins

The Cabin in the Woods is easily one of the best movies made in the last couple of years. I remember sitting in the cinema because there was such a big hype about this movie, and I thought at the first half of the movie "for real, this is it? As if we haven't seen this a million times before already", but then the second half happened, and I had to take my words back because boy, was I wrong. 

Some people are complaining about some similarities between Cabin in the Woods and The Evil Dead. I have to disagree with them. Sure, there are some tiny similarities between both of them, but if you look closely into Cabin in the Woods, you recognize a lot of other horror movies too. The beauty with this movie is that it contains some elements of other amazing horror movies, without it being too obvious or annoying. And just be honest, did anyone expected that ending?

Five teenagers head off for a weekend at a secluded cabin in the woods. They arrive to find they are quite isolated with no means of communicating with the outside world. When the cellar door flings itself open, they go down to investigate. They find an odd assortment of relics and curios but when on one the women, Dana, reads from a book she awakens a family of deadly zombie killers There's far more going on however than meets the eye as the five campers are all under observation.

When I first watched this movie in the cinema, I was bored as hell the first 30 (?) minutes. As many other people  I thought it would be another cliche horror movie, and I almost wanted to leave. Luckily my boyfriend convinced me to stay, and well, I loved it. My friend, a fellow horror lover saw this movie for the first time last weekend, and he also thought he could predict how everything would end, boy, was he surprised when he was wrong. My point is, I think we all thought we could guess how it will end, it which order the people would die and such. Maybe a few people knew that it would end this way, but I don't think that would have been many. 

It has been a long time since a fairly recent horror movie entertained me. This movie finally changed that. I didn't find it a scary movie, but it was build up amazing, with some comedy in it, and some horror creatures from everybody's nightmares. I think this was a movie I've been waiting for, for a long time. Joss Whedon previously entertained me with other movies, or television shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer. But I have to say that he have outdone himself with this movie.

I love the cast of this movie. When this movie was made in 2009, nobody was really well known yet. You might have spotted Fran Kranz in The Village, but that's about it. Of course, this movie was not released until 2012. In this period of time Chris Hemsworth became a very popular actor. I think that  Chris Hemsworth's popularity contributed a bit to The Cabin in the Wood's popularity. Which is not a bad thing. I enjoy Chris Hemsworth as an actor, and this role fitted him perfectly. Fran Kranz has an amazing performance in this movie. If I never saw him in other movies I would totally believe he is this stoner-weirdo type. I was not entirely sure about Kristen Connolly. Sure she is a good actress, but I found her a bit plain to be honest. She didn't entirely convince me that she was scared. Jesse Williams played his parts very well, but at first I never saw him as the 'student' type. He seemed like another hot football player to me. I guess that's why he had glasses on in the following scenes, to make it more believable. Richard Jenkins and Bradley Whitford have an amazing chemistry together, they made this movie fun to watch. I would love to see the two together again in another movie. All together, a great cast.  

The music is amazingly well chosen, it fitted perfectly with every single scene. Also, the dialogues... Joss Whedon has not written the best dialogues for Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but in this movie it was amazing. It fitted the characters, it fitted the story. All good.

Sure, some details in those movies seem to be a bit far-fetched, and some people might get irritated by that. I don't think it was bothering though, because you can not make everything right. Look at all the terrible horror movies that have already been made, why would I look at every tiny detail in a further amazing movie? Some people are just too picky I guess. 

I would love to tell about some of the amazing things happening in this movie, but I'm afraid that I will spoil the whole movie, so I won't say anything! I saw someone say 'The less you know about The Cabin in the Woods, the better'. I'll have to agree with that, because if you know how the story will go, you won't experience the surprise of the amazing plot twist.

This movie gives a whole new look on other horror movies in my opinion. And I can only recommend this movie. But there will be many people who will tell you otherwise.

You either love it or hate it, that's the easiest explanation :).

My personal rate: 9/10