‘Cabin in the Woods’

Probably the most fun I have had at the movies since . . . I don’t know when, Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard’s “The Cabin in the Woods” plays around with all the familiar, clichéd elements of the horror genre, molding them like clay into easily recognizable shapes before rolling over them with five hundred steam-rollers and, in the process, transcending the genre in a more creative and outrageous fashion than horror master Wes Craven was able to do back in 1996 with his postmodern-postmortem slasher flick, “Scream.”

What do five college students off for a sexed-up weekend getaway in a remote cabin in the middle of the woods have to do with two middle-aged government employees working in some kind of top-secret industrial facility for top-secret operations? Well, it is no spoiler to readers that the two technicians are monitoring the students through many hidden cameras for the newest top-secret project, and that the cabin itself is not meant for a relaxing weekend away from it all.

What is the project? To start off, each of the five students happens to fit nicely into a stereotypical kind of horror movie victim. There is Kurt the jock (Curt), Jules the slut (Anna Hutchinson), Dana the virgin (Kristin Connolly), Holden the nice guy (Jessie Williams) and Marty the pothead (Fran Kranz).

Meanwhile, the technicians (Richard Jenkins and Bradley Whitford) are manipulating their decisions, thought and even their sex-drives, all for the purposes of getting them down into the cabin cellar, where a crucial decision lies that will determine the eventual outcome of the operation.

I dare not say more, plot wise, for fear of robbing future viewers of the experience of watching writers Whedon and Goddard aggressively tear down every single wall that horror filmmakers have built over the years. I will say the final third of “The Cabin in the Woods” is a showstopper, both a monumental black eye and a sweet embrace of the horror genre by two guys who love it to pieces — literally. Some bloodshed certainly is not out of the question.

Although a lover of great horror — I’m perpetually in the middle of a Stephen King novel — there most likely are many references and inside jokes I missed, but horror fans must gather round for this exciting and refreshing deconstruction of the genre.

★★★ 1/2 (out of 4)