“Cabin in the Woods,” said the trailer, “You think you know the story!” As soon as I heard this, I started having traumatic flashbacks to my first time watching the ridiculously gory horror flick, “The Evil Dead”: blood spurting all over the place out of horrible-looking dolls that speak with demonically low or Chucky-like voices…talk about 80s special effects.

We’ve all seen the typical horror movie: someone ventures into a dark hallway or a mysterious cellar, screams are heard, and the scantily-dressed are transformed to scantily-limbed. And all of us at one point have shouted at the TV screen, “No, you stupid sorority girl, don’t read the Latin! How did you ever get into college? Don’t go into the basement!”

There have been masses and masses of zombie movies: “Dawn of the Dead,” “The Evil Dead,” “The Walking Dead,” “Shaun of the Dead,” and so on. These have been part of our culture for a very long time, so we know all the tricks. Every time a new “scary” movie comes out, we know the ending before we’ve even seen it. Drew Goddard and Joss Whedon’s new comic horror film “Cabin in the Woods,” however, doesn’t exactly claim to be new and fresh – but it really is. It knows the certain plotlines that befall a horror movie, and it plays on the audience’s expectations of typical events in order to crush the psychology of the viewers.

The movie opens to a water-cooler conversation between co-workers. It’s just a normal conversation one would have with a fellow employee-turned-friend and is reminiscent of John Travolta and Samuel Jackson chatting about Le Big Mac in “Pulp Fiction.” Eventually, it’s revealed that these workers are members of a giant government lab and worry about some big operation that the Swedes failed to complete, but shrugs are exchanged and the matter dismissed. Now the real fun starts.

Five college friends decide to have a getaway weekend and drive way off the grid deep into the remote woods. Leading the pack is power couple Curt and Jules (played by Chris Hemsworth and Anna Hutchison), a big, manly sociology major and his vain, newly-dyed blonde girlfriend. They try to set up the sweet couple of Dana and Holden (Kristen Connolly and Jesse Williams), a girl-next-door with recent guy troubles and an equally friendly guy-next-door who also happens to be very booky. Rounding off the quintet is clever and opinionated stoner Marty (Fran Kranz) who has his own ideas that society is not crumbling; rather, it needs to crumble because that’s the only way the world can survive.

After meeting the obligatory creepy, old man at the abandoned gas station, the group finally reaches their destination of a whimsical yet spooky cottage. Gradually, something begins to change the behavior of everyone and noticeably transforms them into very basic archetypes. And then, of course, someone reads the Latin resurrection mantra and all hell breaks loose.

“Cabin in the Woods” is the thought-child of suspense master Drew Goddard (“Cloverfield”) and genius writer Joss Whedon (“Buffy the Vampire Slayer”/“Angel”), who have a reputation for ripping up the rulebooks of conventional writing. You think the main character won’t die? Try them; Whedon has a knack for cruelly taking away the characters you love most in moments of triumph. They crafted the story with so many references to other horror movies, unexpected twists and jumps, intelligent humor, and of course, gore. Sometimes I couldn’t watch (I know, I’m a disgraceful horror junkie), and sometimes I was mesmerized and could not look away from the clashes.

Every actor filled out their roles completely. Chris Hemsworth (“Thor”) was a natural alpha-male, and Anna Hutchison was very real as his promiscuous mate. Same goes for Kristen Connolly (“The Happening”) and Jesse Williams (“Grey’s Anatomy”), but the real star of the movie was “fool” Fran Kranz (“Donnie Darko”). He was the very stereotypical down-with-system, resourceful hippie man, and the favorite character for much of the movie.

One thing I didn’t understand why Sigourney Weaver randomly showed up. She was in there for , literally, less than three minutes. Lately, she’s just been popping up everywhere, like in “Abduction”, but she doesn’t always serve a clear purpose.

This being a horror movie, gore is to be expected. I thought this was going to be the so-bad-it’s-good kind of bloody, with people losing more blood than they had left and right, but this was actually funny. Not because the gore was unrealistic or badly orchestrated, but because it somehow had hints of satire in it. Think “The Walking Dead”.

“Cabin in the Woods,” as well as being an immensely entertaining movie, also provides a kind of social commentary and can be thoroughly analyzed for hours on end. Why didn’t the order for the bridge demolition go through? Who called it off and why? What does it mean for the characters to live or die the way they do? Why was Sigourney Weaver in this? A good story will make you unconsciously associate little things to it, and I swear that if you watch this, you will run and hide the next time you hear an elevator door ding.

“The Cabin in the Woods” is Rated-R for language and brief comic gore.