3. The Cabin in the Woods
Home stretch time and we have three very different movies occupying these top spots. First off, The Cabin in the Woods, Josh Whedon and Drew Goddards brilliant deconstruction of, and homage to, the horror genre. This has a little bit of everything. It is, for much of the time, a straight up teen zombie horror pic. Then we pull back the curtain and realize it is much more than that. And of course it has Whedons signature humor peppered throughout (Good zombie hand). Really, the less you know about this film going into it, the better it will be, so I dont want to say too much here. But if youve ever watched a scary movie and wondered why, say, the kids feel like its a good idea to have sex in the middle of a dark and creepy forest, now youll know. Whedon and Goddards mission is much bigger than to simply make you jump when the zombie crashes through the window. For fans of the genre, this is like a feast as you see virtually every imaginable scary being (its way more than just zombies). And for those of us that like to act as though our tastes are superior, we can appreciate the story behind the story that pokes fun at the standard conventions of the genre.