Movies like this exactly are why I created a category "Je nais se quois/Flawed Gems". Definitely not a great movie, but certainly original, after a fashion, and ultimately, I thought, worth a watch, despite the flaws—most particularly for people tired of the clichés of the genre.

This is a solidly B-movie supernatural thriller about—wait for it—a family on vacation in a remote cabin in the Oregon mountains when Bad Things Happen. On top of it, it intentionally starts with some of the most hackneyed cliches out there, and sticks with that for long enough that it could throw you.

As the family settles into their cabin, mysterious hooded figures are seen doing... something... in the woods. People talk on the phone in hushed, conspiratorial tones. Something is Clearly Going On.

In the first hint that things are about to get a little different, a TV is seen in the woods, showing an impressively realistic "true crime" reality show. The movie zooms in to show the episode, and, guess what: it's about a woman who murdered her family on the first night of a trip to a remote cabin in the Oregon mountains. We see, as the movie unfolds, how the woman was blamed for horrific murders, and a completely different sequence of events than actually happened. (This isn't a spoiler... by the time this even begins, we've seen the hooded figures repeatedly, we already know they're not alone in the woods and she's not a killer.)

Next the family discovers a woman frozen in the snow outside the cabin, resuscitates her and brings her inside, where her strange behavior alarms them and they ask her to wait outside for the ambulance. Which, it turns out, she has absolutely no intention of doing.

And from there, Scary Things Happen. But, this is key... from this point on in, and with so far an incredibly cheezy setup, they manage to sidestep a lot of clichés, and tell something of a new story. The interpersed "reality show" scenes were a neat gimmick and effectively done, and by the time things started going seriously wrong, the movie had my attention, and I actually rewound it all the way to where they discovered her in the snow, and rewatched with fairly rapt attention from there.

And, in fact, when it ended, I rewound to the beginning and rewatched the beginning scenes I hadn't paid close attention to because of the, I now suppose intentional, misdirection of how incredibly cheezy and clichéd they were. I kinda wish I'd watched it straight through, something I didn't expect to be saying by the end of it.

I can't say it's a great movie. And the overly long misdirection of the cheezy beginning hurts it for sure. But if you want to watch a supernatural "wooded cabin"-type horror thriller B-movie, and don't set your sights too high, once this one gets going... it's different. It's not a story I've heard before, and is a little memorable, rather than forgettable, which is rare for a "Bad Things at a remote cabin"-type horror. It's kind of a date movie, but it gets suspenseful enough that it might actually be a little too engaging for that purpose. I fully expected it to be a totally ignorable movie, and it totally wasn't.

And, I might as well clear the air: Yes, "The Cabin In The Woods" is the definitive "You thought this was going to be a stereotypical horror film, but it's not!"-type cinematic 'gotcha'. This is nowhere near that original a movie, so don't get too excited. It's not a classic. But I liked it. It still takes a familiar setup and tells a story I haven't quite heard before, instead of recycling all the same tired tropes like a million other similarly-set-up movies settle for doing.

At the same time, though, there's no, say, character development. That's not what these movies are about, and this is definitely a genre movie, like a slasher pic (even if in this case way more novel in a number of ways than most slasher pics), and not a better movie that happens to use the conventions of a horror genre, like say, "The Shining" or "The Exorcist". So temper your expectations along those lines.

I'm thinking this is probably a decent director slumming it in a genre flick. Someday I bet I'll see something I really like, and look it up, and say, "Ah, yeah, that's the same director who did 'Dead Night'. Ok, that makes sense now."

Interesting note, it stars AJ Bowen, who was also in personal favorite "The Signal" (2007), which I liked well enough to review twice, as well as in hated pictures "House Of The Devil" (unreviewed, as I saw it before I started regularly reviewing movies and absolutely despised it), "You're Next", The Sacrament, all three of which I passionately loathed. Guy gets around, I guess.

EDIT: This was a first directorial effort from one of the producers of "John Dies At The End", another flawed but memorable film, and brought along the director of photography from that film, as well as another one of the producers, who was also behind Phantasm and Bubba Ho-Tep.

Also, a lot of reviewers, I mean a LOT of them, completely hated this movie. And in particular a lot claim that this movie was a jumble or doesn't make any sense. It definitely has narrative gaps in it (to go along with its missing character development, I suppose), but I wouldn't go anywhere near so far as to just say it made no sense. It had its narrative flaws, and the explanation for the supernatural elements is pretty spotty in particular, but I understood what they were getting at well enough.