The Cabin in the Woods

A machine for explaining why every other film on this site is shaped the way it is.

Five students go to a cabin. Two technicians in an office place bets on how it will go. The film reveals its structure early, roughly twenty minutes in, and spends the rest of its length on the consequences of you knowing.

Drew Goddard and Joss Whedon wrote it in three days and it sat on a shelf for two years while MGM went through bankruptcy. The delay is visible in the cast, several of whom became far better known in the interim.

The lift sequence is the pay-off and it is one of the great sustained gags in the genre, running about four minutes and cashing every cheque the film has written.

It only works once, and it works completely.