Welcome to The Morning After, where I share with you what I’ve seen over the past week either in film or television. On the film side, if I have written a full length review already, I will post a link to that review. Otherwise, I’ll give a brief snippet of my thoughts on the film with a full review to follow at some point later. For television shows, seasons and what not, I’ll post individual comments here about each of them as I see fit.

So, here is what I watched this past week:

The Cabin in the Woods

If you know too much going in, you won’t have nearly as much fun as going in blind. The premise is that of five college students going to a small, isolated cabin in the woods where their wills and mettle is tested against a surprise villain conjured by their own actions. There are frequent twists in the story that leave you constantly guessing what is going on behind the scenes that it keeps you interested in its very clever and sometimes too-clever storytelling devices.

Drew Goddard, who wrote a number of episodes of the acclaimed Joss Whedon shows Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel and Alias as well as episodes of J.J. Abrams’ Lost and Abrams’ big screen Cloverfield has teamed up with Whedon on his directorial debut, an examination of the horror genre, its pitfalls, problems and predictability. While it holds close to many of the values it makes fun of, the ultimate outcome is one which you cannot see coming too soon and whose general thrust changes rather unpredictably. This makes the film a lot more fun that it would have been had it been too serious.

Ex-soap starlet Kristen Connolly, Thor and Avengers star Chris Hemsworth, television actress and former Power Ranger Anna Hutchinson, Dollhouse (a Joss Whedon creation) actor Fran Kranz and Grey’s Anatomy regular Jesse Williams star as the five teenagers thrust into the middle of this wild slaughter fest. Also along for the ride (and surprisingly at that) are Oscar nominee Richard Jenkins, Emmy winner Bradley Whitford and a surprise guest actress making her vocal appearance late in the film. None of the actors are particularly outstanding, though they all at least seem like they’re having fun.

It’s been more than 15 years since the first fully self-aware horror film Scream became a huge hit and films are still trying to use that concept to their advantage, whether it’s in the form of found footage horror or films like that wallow in their familiarity with past efforts like Trick ‘r Treat, everyone wants to be the next big thing. That same feeling seeps from every frame of The Cabin in the Woods and while it succeeds at being a departure from all that surrounds it, there are too many similarities to Wes Craven’s genre re-building feature to be something truly unique. Matter of fact, there are a couple of ways that Cabin could have ended to give this idea more weight, but talking about more than a little bit of the plot would give away far too many crucial elements to leave the film satisfying.