Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on March 2013

Five stereotypical young adults (a virgin, a bad girl, a jock, a stoner and a smart guy) on their way to a weekend of fun at an isolated (no cell service) forest cabin receive a vague warning from a menacing hick at a gas station. Generic, no? Well, that’s kind of the point, because this clever little flick is no mere slasher comedy/thriller. Precisely why I must leave for you to discover, but I don’t think it’s a spoiler, since it’s revealed in the first scene, to tell you that everything these five kids does is monitored and controlled by a pair of middle-management scientists (Bradley Whitford and Richard Jenkins, overseen by Sigourney Weaver) in a high-tech, top-secret underground bunker. Think The Truman Show meets Scream. This high-energy fanboy fantasy changes direction several times as it gradually assembles several seemingly disparate pieces into a coherent puzzle that you will not see coming, right down to the gleeful metaphysical mayhem at the end. Not particularly scary, but a wicked smart movie that subverts cliché and works on many levels while managing to find something new in the tired old title formula.