10 Slasher Movies That Broke All The Rules

This Joss Whedon-scripted horror sci-fi comedy Cabin In The Woods starts off like an average enough slasher, with a set of college students, some of whom would go on to impressive fame (hey there, Thor), setting off for a weekend of partying, drinking, sex, and other punishable-by-machete murder behaviour in a remote cabin in the woods.

But even early on the viewer is given glimpses of a shadowy conspiracy run by government bureaucrats which seems somehow connected to the group’s revelry. As the connective tissue between the two stories is illuminated, the film has a chance to subvert every slasher movie cliché from the “stern old local warning the arrogant kids away from straying off the map” to the “supposedly bright young things turn to dumb kids when it’s convenient to the plot.”

The eventual reveal is a trippy critique of not only slashers, but the horror genre at large, and the film’s story eventually becomes a Lovecraftian satire of cultural norms before ending with an unforgettable twist which throws the last vestiges of recognizable tropes to the wind and offers something truly shocking in their place.