Burl reviews The Cabin in the Woods! (2011)

Burl talking on you again! I’m here to review a newer picture that I’ve just finally caught up with, The Cabin in the Woods! I’d heard it was an enjoyable meta-horror lark, and indeed it lives up to that billing quite handily!

Most of the people reading this have probably already seen it, but in case that’s not true I won’t go into the whole nuts and bolts of the plot, because it’s more enjoyable the less you know! But I will say that it starts off like so many other movies, particularly The Evil Dead, with five young people heading out for an unlikely vacation at a remote cabin in the forest!

Once there, strange things begin to occur! A trapdoor opens and they head down into the cellar, where many curious and eldritch items await! I saw what was going on in this scene, more or less, and found it most amusing indeed! After this, it’s time for zombies, monsters, blood and gore, and of course the huge scientific complex that exists beneath the cabin!

Ha ha, the movie has many funny moments and performances – Richard Jenkins, from Killing Them Softly, is particularly uproarious as one of the boffins who work in the subterranean cavern! The filmmakers were smart enough to hire Peter “Evil Dead 2” Deming to do their cinematography, so the picture doesn’t just look good, it looks good in the way it ought to!

I do have a few complaints, however! I noticed a giant spider lurking in the margins of one shot, and I was disappointed that we never saw it in action! Giant snakes are okay, but they’re just not the same! Also, the movie isn’t quite as scary as it could have been, and that’s too bad, because what a wonderfully rounded picture it would have been if it had managed some bloodcurdling between laffs!

The movie was produced by the fellow who made The Avengers, and so it’s a pretty slick piece of work! It’s almost too slick; it could use a little grunge in the early scenes, it seems to me! But that’s really a minor bit of nit-picking! I very much enjoyed the picture, and if this review is a little on the short side, it’s because so many others have had their say about it already, and I don’t want to reveal things to whomever out there hasn’t had a chance to see it yet! So I’ll just say that The Cabin in the Woods is a peppy picture, and I give it three mermen!