First trailer for The Cabin In The Woods

The first trailer has been unveiled for Joss Whedon’s genre-melding frightener The Cabin In The Woods , and it looks as though he and director Drew Goddard have had great fun subverting every horror cliché in the book.

The film tells the story of a bunch of weekending young professionals setting out for a booze-fuelled getaway in an isolated country cabin. A country cabin that turns out to be considerably creepier than they’d bargained for.

From the blasé approach of our young protagonists (“It doesn’t even show up on the GPS! It’s unworthy of global positioning!”) to the menacing local at a run-down rest-stop (“Sign says closed!”) all the traditional scary movie plot points appear to be present and correct, before everything takes a turn for the bizarre.

Check out the trailer below…

Yep, that was a force-field you saw a bird fly into. This is clearly the point at which Whedon’s script diverges from the beaten track, with the luckless tourists seemingly pawns in a bizarre game concocted by a group of unseen antagonists.

That said, there seem to be a lot of traditional horror movie flourishes thrown in for good measure. The look of the cabin for example is a clear homage to The Evil Dead , from the eye-like windows to the mounted animal heads within.

We’ll be queuing up to have our nerves frayed and brains scrambled in equal measure, when the film arrives in UK screens on 13 April 2012.

George was once GamesRadar's resident movie news person, based out of London. He understands that all men must die, but he'd rather not think about it. But now he's working at Stylist Magazine.