Big Screen Peter: The Cabin in the Woods

There's a song from a Memphis rap duo that kicks off with the line, “No one expected the unexpected.”

That introductory caveat could be used for Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard's new production, The Cabin in the Woods.

The pair — having previously worked together on the influential television show Buffy the Vampire Slayer — both enjoy a cultish following thanks to their inventive work over the last decade. From Doctor Horrible's Sing-Along Blog and Firefly to Lost and Cloverfield, Whedon and Godard have both left an indelible mark on popular culture.

With The Cabin in the Woods, however, they have created a genre-bending horror movie that is both entertainment and criticism. It's funny and grotesque and inventive, but it's also a giant middle-finger to the crass perpetrators of the now ubiquitous torture porn film genre. It's a paradigm shifting opus that turns the normal shlock of horror films squarely on its head.

Goddard and Whedon purposefully set the film up like countless other horror movies: a diverse group of college kids head out to the countryside to spend a weekend in a cabin. The trite nods don't stop there, as the mental mistakes pile up, the group of young adults find themselves in a desperate fight for survival against a pack of redneck zombies.

But the movie is no mere cliché filled satire.

It's an honest to god horror flick that delivers more than its fair share of fearsome brutality and white-knuckled suspense.

Part of the film's fun is piecing together the weird, puzzling connections behind the onscreen action. As the story develops though, the outlandish and comical premise of Cabin in the Woods becomes evident, pitting the gripping action of the horror plot against a larger narrative of survival.

With two almost equally desperate hooks in play, there is a striving and divisive pathos to Cabin that is virtually unheard of in the genre. Where most horror movies have a very cut and dry approach, Cabin is remarkably nuanced.

The clever separation embedded into the premise of the film is what makes Cabin such a stunning achievement for Whedon and Godard. Weaving a puzzled logic into the traditional horror set up, they somehow pay thorough homage to the horror genre all while eviscerating its worst aspects.

The movie is, quite simply, a laudable achievement. A voyeuristic romp that is, even with all the fun and raucous, spine-tingling action, a dark and deeply troubling societal commentary.