Grade: B

Horror films with the sole purpose of showing people killed in a variety of fashions are not my favorite, but “The Cabin in the Woods” put a twist on the usual that made the film somewhat bearable.

Basically, the movie bluntly tells how every horror movie gets put together.

A young group of characters go away for a weekend of fun to the most remote location one can imagine that turns out to have some kind of horrid past that comes to haunt the living.

“The Cabin in the Woods” takes five college students to, well, a cabin in the woods. The twist comes as they drive through a tunnel that somehow takes them to an environment controlled by an underground laboratory.

The two main lab geeks played by Richard Jenkins (“Step Brothers”) and Bradley Whitford (“Billy Madison”) have the ability to alter the surroundings of the group of students and even put gases into the air to make them act differently.

The laboratory doesn’t just do this for fun, and that creates an intriguing plot that was foreshadowed at the beginning of the movie, which kind of ruined the suspense.

However, the movie seems to make fun of the horror genre by listing exactly what each horror movie has and even over exaggerates the bad acting, I think. I hope that there was an intention behind the bad acting at least.

Fran Kranz gives the best performance in the movie as the character Marty, the joker of the group. Kranz definitely makes the movie worth watching just because every line he says keeps the audience laughing.

With the hype of the “The Hunger Games” right now, “The Cabin in the Woods” has an oddly similar theme, but is definitely intended for an older audience than “The Hunger Games.”

I would suggest going to see it, but keep in mind that it’s not a typical horror movie, so expect anything to happen.