MOVIE SPOILER The Cabin in the Woods (review follows)

Movie Spoiler: The Cabin in the Woods (Review at the end of post).  Sitterson (Oscar nominated Richard Jenkins from The Visitor) and Hadley (The West Wing's Bradley Whitford) coalesce by the coffee machine discussing child-proofing the home.  They both work at a high-tech lab.  In the hallway, Lin (Amy Acker) pulls them over in the hallway expressing concern that Japan may beat the US this year.  They men take off in a golf cart and the movie suddenly delivers its first jolt with the title placard for The Cabin in the Woods.

Anna Hutchison

The credits roll as Dana (Kristen Connolly) up in her second floor room prepares for the weekend trip to, well, you know what and where, as the title is very specific.  Her friend Jules (Anna Hutchison) catches her staring at a sketch she has made of the teacher who has broken her heart recently.  Jules had her boyfriend Curt (Thor's Chris Hemsworth) invite hottie Holden (Jesse Williams from Grey's Anatomy) to distract Dana.  Curt, whose cousin apparently owns the cabin they'll be visiting, pops in and throws a football out the window and Holden catches it out on the street.

Chris Hemsworth

As the four prepare the RV, Marty (Dollhouse's Fran Kranz) shows up in an old red Volvo station wagon while administering a hit out of a huge bong.  As he exits the car, he collapses the device into a small thermos.  All five take off for the mountains as a security person watches them from atop Dana's home.  In the RV, they discuss the pitfalls of technology's effect on society.

At the lab's control room, Truman (Brian White) greets Sitterson and Hadley and preparations are made for the day's activities.

The kids arrives at an old gas station that is text-book dumpy: run-down, non-electric pumps, seen better days.

It's complete with a creep who "runs" the place Mordecai (Tim De Zarn), who startles Holden (and the audience) while he checks out the inside of the store.  They ask for directions to the cabin and the guy acts oddly, spits and is generally an asshole to them.

They take off further up the mountain as they are unaware they're entering a secured zone that is completely monitored.  A hawk flies into a force field enveloping the surroundings and burns to a crisp.  The only way in and out is the tunnel the kids enter unassumingly.

Jesse Williams

They arrive at the humble cabin and Dana is the first to walk in.  In his room, Holden takes down a disturbing oil painting depicting the savage death of an animal.  It reveals a two-way window and while he's tempted to watch an unaware Dana undress on the other side, he alerts everyone of its existence.  She takes him up on his offer to switch rooms and finds herself in the same position as he begins to undress and places the painting back on the wall.  Not being able to deal with the graphic and incendiary nature of the picture, she covers it with a blanket.

The camera pans out to reveal the surveillance room monitoring the various areas of the cabin and its premises.  The team decides that they're going to administer an aphrodisiac via Jule's hair products in order to get things rolling.  Mordecai calls them and reveals that his personality is all an act.  He's infuriated that he's on speaker phone and the team is having fun at his expense.

The kids swim in the lake and enjoy the warm sun.

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At the lab, Sitterson takes bets from everyone on which monstrosity the kids will unknowingly "choose" to terrorize them.  Truman and Lin discuss how much free will is really in play in a situation with a predetermined outcome.  "The don't transgress, they won't be punished," we're informed

At the cabin, the kids listen to music while playing Truth or Dare.  Marty dares Jules to make out with the mount of a wolf's head, which she accepts and turns the challenge into a whole performance.  A trapdoor suddenly flies open and Jules dares Dana to walk down its steps.  With a flashlight, she sees a dollhouse, pictures, and toys.  She screams and the rest run down to investigate.  Each of them become enamored by a particular object: Curt, a globe-shaped puzzle; Jules, a pendant; Holden, a music box; Marty, film spools; and Dana, an old diary.  Marty hears a woman's voice, "Read it."  Dana does so and continues even after the English switches over to Latin.  It summons a spell that draws a family of zombies by the name of the Buckners to emerge from the ground.

Amy Acker

Back at the lab, the pool winners are the maintenance crew who correctly predicted the Buckners.  Sitterson and Hadley debrief.  As it turns out, there are several other horror scenarios being enacted across the globe.  A monitor from Kyoto shows a female ghost terrorizing a classroom full of girls.

Hutchison as Jules,
about to pop them breasts out

At the cabin, Jules dances provocatively by the fireplace.  She flirts with Marty, before going outside with Curt.  Marty mentions to Dana the weird vibe he's getting before going to his room.  Holden starts reading the Latin to Jules.

Outside, Curt and Jules have wandered off into the woods, as the lab watches them on a jumbo screen.  Hadley sends all the spectators away, before he pumps more pheromones through the ground which persuade Curt and Jules to start making out.  Hadley provides them with some mood lighting.  Sitterson: "Gotta keep the customers satisfied."  Curt goes down on Jules before she reveals her breasts.  A Buckner attacks them.  And, then another shows up with an animal trap.  They decapitate Jules off-screen.

While Sitterson prays at the lab, a mechanism begins to release blood into a tomb area that lines five wall etching representing each of the five kids.  This will later provide the setting for the finale.  Marty hears the mysterious female voice again prompting him to "go for a walk." "No ... you think I'm a puppet, huh? ... gonna do a little fucking puppet dance.  I'm the boss of my own brain, so give it up ... I'm gonna go for a walk."

Brian White

While Dana and Holden make out, Marty walks by and says, "He's got a husband bulge."  Outside, he urinates as the one-armed Patience Buckner (Jodelle Ferland) approaches him from behind.  A frantic Curt runs into him and they both charge into the cabin, shutting the door behind them.  Dana opens the door where one of the Buckners is standing.  He throws Jules' head and she catches it.  They shut the door again.  Curt insists they remain together, but after the lab sprays a mist through a vent aimed at him he changes his mind and suggests they split up.

Once they are all in their rooms, the lab locks them all in.  Marty knocks over a lamp and discovers a tiny hidden camera attached to a cord.  "Oh my God.  I'm on a reality TV show.  My parents are going to think I'm such a burnout."  A Buckner breaks through the window and pulls Marty outside, stabs him, and pulls him into the ground.  More blood flows into a tomb etching.  There's an earthquake.  A zombie attacks Dana and Holden breaks through the two-way mirror and saves her.  They flee through a trap door and Dana realizes they're in "the black room."

A Buckner attacks Holden from above with the animal trap and Dana saves him.  "You like pain?  How's that work for you?" she says as she attacks the zombie.  Curt surprises them, they escape the cabin and hop into the RV.

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Cut to Japan where the school girls have defeated the evil spirit Kiko by turning her into a frog.  We can see from several other monitors that evil is being defeated across the globe.

Hemsworth as Curt

The RV makes it to the tunnel much to the distress of both Sitterson and Hadley.  They manage to blow the passageway up and block the kids from escaping.  They back the RV up and survey the situation.  Curt decides he's going to attempt to clear the crevice separating them from the road beyond the tunnel with his motorbike before delivering an over-the-top, inspirational speech, "Look, you guys stay in the rambler.  I'll get help.  If I wipe out, I'll fucking limp for help.  But, I'm coming back here.  I'm coming back with cops, and choppers, and large fucking guns, and those things are going to pay.  For Jules."  He crashes into the invisible force field and disintegrates.  More blood flows into one of the etchings in the tomb.  The two remaining kids drive the RV back towards the cabin.  A zombie attacks Holden, who is driving, and send them over an embankment into the lake.  Dana manages to flee the sinking RV and a Buckner and swims to the surface.

The killers' murder weapon of choice

At the lab, the team celebrates.  Dana climbs onto the dock, but a Buckner attacks her with the animal trap.  Her thrashing continues on the jumbo screen as "Roll with the Changes" plays by REO Speedwagon.  Hadley takes an important call from a red phone.  He's informed that Marty survived, who then saves Dana.  They knock the zombie out and run.

As he rises from the water, Marty and Dana jump into the grave he was first pulled into.  She sees the remains of the Buckner who we thought killed him.  "Yeah, I had to dismember that guy with a trowel."  He shows her a secret elevator and they enter.  A flopping appendage reaches for Marty, prompting him to react, "Fucking zombie arm."

Fran Kranz

In the elevator, they take a trip and start to get a tour of all the different monstrosities that could have been unleashed on them instead of the Buckners: a ferocious werewolf, mystical spirit, a little ballerina with circles of teeth for a face, a scary man with saw blades embedded in his head holding the globe-shaped puzzle which transfixed Curt earlier.  The camera pulls out to reveal a locker containing hundreds upon hundreds of different possibilities.

Everyone panics back at the lab.  A man pulls a gun on Marty and Dana when the elevator door opens.  The zombie arms intervenes and saves them.  We hear The Director's (Sigourney Weaver) voice over the intercom system, "What's happening to you is part of something bigger, something older than anything known ... what came before, what lies below.  It's our task to placate the ancient ones, as it's yours to be offered up to them."

A team of armed men dressed in black begin to search for the two kids and when they locate them begin shooting at the surveillance room they're holed up in.

Dana presses some buttons which emit a sound.  The men stop shooting, the elevators open and a cornucopia of ghouls descend upon the shooters and tear them limb from limb in a series of colorful and fun visual effects.  The lunatics have taken over the asylum.  Marty and Dana flee when a mutant bat crashes through the window of their room.  The bloodbath continues with a death by unicorn.  Monsters ravage Truman, before Sitterson and Hadley blow them up.  Hadley succumbs to a beast, another scoops up Lin from the ceiling.  Sitterson escapes, but Dana stabs him dead.  Before he dies, he cryptically informs her, "It's you.  No, no, no, no, please, please, please, please, kill him."

Kristen Connolly as Dana

The duo stumble into the tomb area, where they are greeted by The Director.  She explains that they all played certain archetypes.  Jules was the whore, Curt the athlete, Holden the scholar, Marty the fool, and Dana the "virgin."  She informs them that they're all in service to "the ancient ones, the Gods that used to rule the earth.  As long as they accept our sacrifice, they remain below.  But, the other rituals have all failed."  And it's up to the kids to preserve the human race: "You can die with them or you can die for them."  Dana pulls a gun on Marty, as he is the one who needs to be offered as a sacrifice (Dana's death is optional).  The werewolf attacks Dana, he shoots the beast and The Director wrestles the gun away from him.  While he fights with The Director, Patience Buckner shows up and drives an axe into her.  Marty shoves The Director to her death through an opening in the floor.  Dana apologizes and Marty lights up a cigarette, which they both enjoy.  There is an explosion and a gigantic hand erupts from the ground and thrusts itself into the air.  Roll credits.

The $30M production lensed three years ago in Vancouver, B.C.

[Pictures via TV Rage, Zimbio, Gunsjy, Electric Ferret, IMDb, Herald Sun, Hot Black Men, Vimeo]

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Capsule Review (spoilers, I guess)

Headshot of Matt Drake who plays
one of the Bruckner zombies; no, he
looks nowhere near this hot in the movie

I'm not going to lie: I was super-excited to see this film.  The comedy-horror film provides a few yucks and jolts and holds its premise pretty consistently.  Two men carry on like Christof in The Truman Show (which we know from the beginning of the film) and terrorize a group of youngsters in a completely controlled environment.  Except, Cabin's reality show doesn't have a viewing audience within the movie.  Instead, they have a cryptic sacrificial obligation that left me scratching my head.  Its self-referential nature is similar to the Scream franchise, where Cabin tries to one-up the formula and reinvent it.  While those films managed to successfully poke fun at the genre, eventually relenting to some of its pitfalls, Cabin maintains a more esoteric distance.  It's reaching for something greater, but it's extremely difficult to decipher just exactly what the Hell that is.  Sometimes lovingly assembled, other times, there is no foresight or follow-through.  At times brilliantly and professionally executed, but, overall, the film leaves you frustrated that it could have been so much better if it actually knew what it was.