Shed in a woods

A group of student friends - Kurt ( Chris Hemsworth ), his girlfriend Jules ( Anna Hutchison ), her friend Dana ( Kristen Connolly ), transferred from another college Holden ( Jesse Williams ) and joker addict Marty ( Fran Krantz ) go on a motorhome to rest into the wilderness, into the hut supposedly bought by Kurt's cousin. On the way, they stop at an abandoned gas station, where a local resident makes them vague but ominous warnings, pass through the tunnel and get to the hut, where they are located, bathe in the lake next door and enjoy life in every possible way. It only spoils the one-way mirror between the two rooms, covered by a frightening picture.

At the same time, in an underground laboratory, a group of specialists led by experienced superiors Mr. Sitterson ( Richard Jenkins ) and Mr. Hadley ( Bradley Whitford ) is preparing a certain operation, watching the students through cameras. At a key moment, the hatch opens into the basement; young people go downstairs and find that the basement is littered with a mass of various objects - books, dolls, jewelry and the like. At the same time, specialists in the laboratory are rapidly making money bets on which subject students will choose.

Dana opens one of the books and reads from it several lines in Latin. The lines turn out to be a spell that makes the family of zombie - saddle - redneck sadists rise from the forest graves - in fact, this process is controlled by laboratory experts. Unsuspecting students continue to have fun; Kurt and Jules go to the forest to have sex, but zombies kill Jules and injure Kurt. Marty, obeying his whispering voices, also goes out for a walk. Bloodied Kurt manages to save him. Four friends barricade the besieged zombie house, scattering around the rooms. After the zombies drag Marty to the grave, Kurt, Holden and Dana try to leave in the motorhome, but the tunnel leading to the rescue collapses at the last moment. Kurt tries to jump over the abyss on a motorcycle, but crashes against an invisible wall that separates the surroundings of the hut from the outside world. Holden and Dana in a motorhome ride back to the wilderness; Climbing into a motorhome, a zombie kills Holden and the motorhome falls into the lake. Dana gets to the surface, but on the shore she is waiting for a zombie with a trap.

In the laboratory, the experts rejoice and congratulate each other on the end of the operation. However, a call from the mysterious Director cuts off their fun. Marty survived, and he rescues Dana. They take the elevator down to the high-tech dungeon under the hut. In the laboratory, experts suggest that the marijuana smoked by Marty Mikalski has dulled his susceptibility to the effects of the substances they use. They raise the alarm. Marty and Dana find in the dungeons a zoo of monsters locked in boxes: a werewolf , a ghost , zombies , masked maniacs resembling the Senobits from the HellRaiser series (Puppet (original Dolls)), a demonic man with circular saws in his head and a puzzle sphere familiar to the heroes (Hell Lord (orig. Hell Lord)), a girl with a set of mouths instead of a face (Sugar Fairy (orig. Sugarplum Fairy)), a giant bat, ten-meter cobra, arachnid robot with circular saws, gaseous on its extremities creatures of various kinds, surgeons, inhabitants of a psychiatric hospital, dwarf cannibals, a clown maniac, reminiscent of Pennywise from the mini-series " It ", a bunch of zombies and the like. Having recognized the puzzle in the hands of the Hell Lord with which Kurt interacted in the basement, Dana realized that in the basement she and her friends were choosing how they would die. At the very bottom, a guard with a gun is trying to detain them, but Marty and Dana walk away from him, taking possession of the weapons. The special forces block students in the room with control panels, and Dana presses the buttons, releasing all the monsters into the corridors of the laboratory at the same time.

While the monsters chase and kill the guards and staff, Marty and Dana go down to the hall with the images of five figures and talk to the Director ( Sigourney Weaver ). As it turns out, the hut and laboratory were built for the sacrifice in order to propitiate the ancient gods ^[5] , sleeping in the bowels of the Earth, and if they wake up, the end of the world will come. The director requires Dana to kill Marty in order to complete the ritual. With the intervention of a werewolf and a zombie girl, the Director dies, and the seriously wounded Dana and Marty spend the last minutes of the world let go, dragging on a jamb with marijuana . Dawn sets in, and a giant hand of an ancient god breaks out from under a cabin in a forest.

There is also an alternative ending, (directorial version) in which Dana still kills Marty with a pistol, and the Director, grabbing the gun, wanted to kill Dana, but the attacking werewolf flew into the abyss along with the Director; all exhausted Dana apologizes to the murdered Marty, notices marijuana in her pocket, takes it out, sits on the stairs and lights a cigarette, realizing that she saved the world, but lost all her friends.

The script was written by Drew Goddard and Joss Whedon , who in the past worked together on the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel . Filming took place in Vancouver from March to May 29, 2009. The picture was shot by cameraman Peter Deming, known for David Lynch's Highway to Nowhere , and also in the second, third and fourth parts of The Scream. ^[6]

Although by the summer of 2009 the film was finished and was supposed to be released on October 23, 2009, but its release was repeatedly postponed. For some time, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer planned to convert the film to 3D format , but its financial problems and bankruptcy in 2010 forced to sell the rights to the film to Lionsgate , ^[7] which paid about 12 million US dollars - less than half of all production costs tapes. ^[eight]

The film received positive reviews from film critics. The Rotten Tomatoes website has collected 74 reviews, of which 92% are positive ^[9] .

Roger Ebert gave the film three stars out of four, praising the originality and unpredictability of the film: “This film is not perfect; it is so uneven that it practically consists of continuous holes. And yet he is captivating - because he goes far from the mountain trails. I can only imagine how the creators giggled, in a free flight of thought, adding one crazy idea after another to the script. They set the rules in order to break them. " Ebert, in addition, called the film “a puzzle for fans of the genre,” seducing them to look for references to other films, deconstructed conventions, and pondering whether the entire film is an act of criticism ^[10] .

Rex Reed, a columnist for The New York Observer , pejoratively criticized the film, deeming the acting and unsatisfactory script, which he called "evidence of the wonders of writing on meth ." According to him, even such thrash films as “ People Against Zombies ” and “ I Spit on Your Graves ” compared to “Cabin in the Forest” “are watched by Moliere and Proust .” Reed considered the design of monsters the only positive side of the film. ^[11]

From the review of the film “Cabin in the Forest” in the magazine “Session” :

Horror, like a ritual: from cramming rules does not get worse. And from the promulgation of these rules - too. Goddard and Whedon opened their cards at the stage of the video. In their forest, they did not just hut a hut, but the real “ House-2 ”. The five students are monitored by the "big brother", a deeply classified state structure. Workers in the underground bunker have everything according to plan - both a basement with bad things, and a riot of pheromones that forest fog breathes, and a dissection on a moonlit lawn. For the sake of a good deed, they try .. ^[12]

• Cabin in the Woods on the Internet Movie Database  
• Cabin in the forest (English) on allmovie  
• The Cabin in the Woods at Rotten Tomatoes