So... I fully realize that I wasn't exactly the target audience for this film, but I really did want to like it. A creative, mind-bending, genre-defying slasher movie satire? Count me in!

I don't know if my expectations were simply too high, considering the ridiculous amount of hype this got, or whether you just have to be a Buffy or Angel aficionado to fully appreciate all the little winks and nods that apparently permeate Joss Whedon's newest creation. Either way, I was disappointed. And I can't even explain in much detail exactly why, because I might spoil the few (lame) surprises this film has in store for you.

The set-up is the stuff of your ordinary horror flick, although in this case we know pretty early on that it's actually intended to poke fun at the cliches. Five attractive, horny, vapid, cardboard cut-out college co-eds embody all the traditional stereotypes, but each with a slight twist: the oversexed bottle blonde, the studious jock, the hot brainiac, the surprisingly articulate stoner, the semi-virgin. Fortune finds the crew holed up in — yes, you got it — a spooky cabin in the woods, amiably chugging Bud Light and playing Truth or Dare until an angry family of redneck zombies emerges from the ground out back and hunts them down one by one.

Of course, there's more to the story than meets the eye, as anyone could guess from the intriguing Rubik's-cube-esque movie poster alone. We're introduced to the second layer (of several) in the opening scene: a mysterious control room, very much reminiscent of parts of The Hunger Games, at least on a superficial level. (The timing of the two movies' releases actually spoiled the clever factor of this part for me a little bit, even though the operators' motives turn out to be quite different.)

People keep saying that The Cabin in the Woods is radically original. Brilliant and genius, even--the ultimate horror film that quote-unquote “redefines the entire genre.” Sure, it has its moments — the coffee-thermos bong-turned-weapon, the jock's melodramatic speech before he zooms off on his motorcycle to find help, the warehouse full of various monsters, and the unicorn scene were a few of my favorites. I found it about as entertaining as your average torture-porn-horror movie up until the last fifteen minutes, at which point it just got nauseatingly silly. The twists were lame, like in a straight-to-DVD kind of way. There are excessive numbers of gaping plot holes--maybe that's the point. But surely there's a point at which not having a point and not being well-written or well-developed is no longer the crux of the “joke.”

That being said, a good deal of this film's entertainment value comes from going into the theater sans spoilers, so I'm keeping this review pretty short and vague on purpose. If you're a horror and/or Buffy fan, this film may be life-changing in ways I clearly don't understand. If not, don't expect much more than a couple hours of predictably raunchy and bloody all-out silliness.