This week is a weird week. It’s the week I think The Hunger Games finally falls. We’ve got an all-out witty actioner in Lockout. A comedy remake no one really wants in The Three Stooges and a horror movie that has risen like the Phoenix from the ashes of MGM’s bankruptcy.

Christopher Orr of The Atlantic says:

The Cabin in the Woods is a horror movie embedded in a conspiracy flick embedded in another horror movie—the most inventive cabin-in-the-woods picture since The Evil Dead and the canniest genre deconstruction since Scream.

Ian Buckwalter of NPR says:

For all of its intellectual pleasures, though, Cabin in the Woods is a visceral roller coaster of a movie at heart. And like the best thrill rides, when it’s over, you just want to get back on and go again.

Tom Long of the Detroit News says:

But if you like nutty energy, wacky ideas, crisp dialogue and scary, bloody, gory, grotesque and twisted movies — man, are you going to have a blast this weekend.

Claudia Puig of USA Today says:

Though there are plot holes in the elaborately concocted scenarios, The Cabin in the Woods gets points for the twists and turns that come along with its sly wickedness.

Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly says:

It’s an enchantingly well-done tribute that revives, and even refreshes, our affection for the Stooges, yet at its core it lacks the completely and totally unhinged shock of the new.

Stephen Whitty of the New Jersey Star-Ledger says:

The only possibly interesting thing about it is trying to figure out why it was made at all.

Peter Travers of The Rolling Stone says:

For the Farrellys, The Three Stooges is a labor of love. For non-believers, it’s merely a labor.

Sean O’Connell of the Washington Post says:

The Farrellys, in effect, have created a cover band. They play all the hits (pun intended), although it’s not the same, and the difference is bothersome.

Mike LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle says:

Too much of “Lockout” consists of Pearce and Grace running through a dim corridor, with people shooting at them.

William Goss of Film.com says:

Thankfully, a brisk pace and Guy Pearce’s leading turn as Thomas Jane playing Snake Plissken prove vital to lending Lockout a certain matinee-level B-movie charm.

Kyle Smith of the New York Post says:

The chemically induced coma with which the bad guys threaten to punish our hero sounds more interesting than anything in this movie.

Rafer Guzman of Newsday says:

“Lockout” might have gotten by if it displayed a little creativity, but writer-directors Stephen St. Leger and James Mather can’t even reach basic believability.

lockout, the cabin in the woods, the three stooges