Movie reviews

The Cabin in the Woods (16s) begins in an entirely conventional fashion, as five college kids take off in a camper van for a weekend at, you guessed it, a remote cabin in the woods.

There’s the blonde vamp, the geeky stoner, the bookish virgin, you know the drill. Well, the drill’s about to change, because this is the most inventive horror movie since Scream (1996). Directed by Lost producer Drew Goddard, the movie blends the standard schlock gore of classic kitsch horrors such as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) with Scream’s self-awareness, and tosses in a generous helping of The Truman Show (1998) for an audience reared on reality TV excess.

It’s all fiendishly clever and chin-strokingly post-modern, of course, but Goddard & Co never forget that the point of the exercise is a fast-paced horror flick that pushes all the right buttons, even as it scoffs at our expectations and our need for old-fashioned narrative resolution.