7 Movie Trailers That Had Us All Fooled

The Cabin In The Woods Was Not Just Your Typical Monster/Slasher Film

Has any film subverted expectations so gleefully as The Cabin In The Woods did?

Here’s another case of a trailer misleading us but misleading us in a positive way. You see, the marketing for this film painted it as just another slasher flick with dumb kids doing dumb things and thus, deserving their inevitable bloody deaths. Sure, there were flickers of something more sinister in the trailers (shots of a control room, levers being pushed, accusations of someone being behind the killings), but it was all very subtle and my bet is that the majority of the moviegoing public didn’t pick up on it.

And so, many people walked into The Cabin in the Woods expecting a couple of cheap thrills and not much more. I know I did.

As well all know, though, audiences got a lot more than they bargained for when filmmakers Drew Goddard and Joss Whedon completely flipped the genre on its head, presenting us with a batshit crazy thriller that boasted a ton of ingenuity and wit. It could have all gone very wrong, but the execution was flawless and the result was one of my favorite films of the year, a sentiment that many people shared.