Rated R. 1 hour, 45 minutes.  At area theaters.

"Five friends walk into a cabin."

That line could easily be the start of a feature-length, horror-movie gag in which the jokes are on the characters as, one by one, they meet a bloody end.

With a well-concocted mix of shudders, titters and, yes, sorrow, the R-rated "The Cabin the Woods" teases this set-up, turns the joke on its head and also makes sure audiences know that something really is at stake for the characters, as well as for us.

Director Drew Goddard and his co-writer, Joss Whedon, actually hope we'll care about the fates of the five college students who head to the mountains in a beat-up RV to frolick and enjoy one another's company.

While this comes as a relief, given the depleted, rebooted state of the horror genre, it shouldn't come as a surprise, exactly. Whedon and Goddard (a University of Colorado at Boulder grad) collaborated on "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Angel." Each has done pop-culture-nudging work. Goddard, directing his first feature, wrote for J.J. Abrams' "Alias" and "Lost." Next month, the Whedon-directed "Avengers" opens.

Naturally, the cabin-bound crew make a good-looking bunch. Chris Hemsworth plays Curt, a golden-boy athlete. Just as honey-hued is girlfriend Jules (Anna Hutchison). They coax their more buttoned-down friend Dana (Kristen Connolly) away from her textbooks and an ill-conceived romance. They bring along friend Holden (Jesse Williams) for a hoped-for match. Franz Kranz is winning as the fifth wheel: philosopher stoner Marty.


Sure, they sound like genre archetypes — the hunky jock, the tarty blonde, the hemp-happy pal, the nice guy, the good girl — but they are not just fodder for kills. The scripts fleshes them out in subtle ways to thwart assumptions.

At first what they encounter is creepy: a two-way mirror, a seemingly pastoral painting of bloodletting, a cellar with a trove of odd and mesmerizing knickknacks and, finally, a very disturbing journal.

Then it turns lethal.

Out of the gate, the straightforwardly titled fright flick proves not so straightforward. While there's the quaint-sounding abode of the title, "The Cabin in the Woods" also unfolds in a subterranean control room in a high-tech (in a '70s-NASA sort of way) facility.

There, two laboratory managers oversee the goings-on in the woods.

Initially Richard Jenkins and Bradley Whitford provide expert comic relief as Sitterson and Hadley. The pair are in charge of what takes place in the woods. Think "The Hunger Games" gameskeepers only more likable and more diabolical. They are joined by proper G-man Truman (Brian White) and co-worker Lin (Amy Acker).

Sitterson (Richard Jenkins, left), Lin (Amy Acker, center) and Hadley (Bradley Whitford, right) in &quot;The Cabin in the Woods.&quot;
Sitterson (Richard Jenkins, left), Lin (Amy Acker, center) and Hadley (Bradley Whitford, right) in "The Cabin in the Woods." (Diyah Pera)

"The Cabin in the Woods" has a number of amusing twists. To share too many would rob the moviegoer of the pleasures of the jumpy, at times goofball, thought-provoking ride.

Goddard and Whedon are crazy about the horror genre, to be sure. They're even more compelled to use their bag of tricks to tell a dark tale about the bonds of friendship and the demands of humanity, about sacrifice and manipulation, about good and evil.

And you thought you were just headed for a weekend getaway.

Lisa Kennedy: 303-954-1567 or lkennedy@denverpost.com