For over a decade, Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard have pumped new life into the sci-fi and horror genres by upending traditional approaches to well-worn tropes and re-imagining them in a post-modern, psychedelically surreal style. As the creators, individually and together, of Lost, Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Alias, Firefly and Angel, Whedon and Goddard have conjured up alternate realities of suburban vampires, gigantic lumbering monsters, time-traveling lost souls, sci-fi psychonauts and Modesty Blaisenesque secret agents that have turned the gaze of a generation up from their shoes to the pulsing ray of the TV screen. Rod Serling would be proud of this prolific pair.

With The Cabin in the Woods— which had its world premiere before a packed house a few nights ago at the Paramount Theatre in Austin, TX— director Goddard and his co-writer Whedon start with an homage to Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead trilogy and end up mashing up several decades worth of horror movies into 105 minutes of mind bending insanity that no plot summary can do justice to without spoiling the fun. The ingenuity of the movie is in its inspired combination of the familiar and the utterly strange. Just when you think you know where things are headed, the movie takes a turn for the wildly unexpected. The monsters may be old school, true, but The Cabin In the Woods moves with the speed and agility of a young and very hungry Velociraptor.

See the movie premiere photos and read more about The Cabin in the Woods at Tap into Austin 2012.