HARK: SPOILERS

“The Evil Dead” is a fine horror movie. “Evil Dead II” is a bona fide classic. Here’s the joke: They’re basically the same movie. The first one was directed by a 22-year-old Sam Raimi when he wanted to prove he could conjure real screams with no money. The second, six years later, was a comedy that had terrific (and much-copied) fun with the cliches of the slasher pic. And since then, it’s been hard to take the cabin-in-the-woods movie very seriously. It’s a set-up that works best as parody (“Dead Snow,” “Tucker and Dale Versus Evil”) or psychological fuck-you-up (“Antichrist”), but not as horror. (One problem: Once cell technology became cheap and omnipresent, audiences noticed when you ostentatiously put characters in places where their iPhones were bricked.)

And so we have “The Cabin in the Woods,” a sort of ur-parody of all horror movies that uses the cursed, electronically stranded outpost as a starting point. It was co-written by Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard. I was a little surprised at the choice of partners, because Goddard worked on the final, more-serious season of Whedon’s “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.” He’s kept his end up and created a seriously funny satire of slasher flicks, but he’s kept the serious stuff in there.

My first spoiler: “The Cabin in the Woods” posits that the Ancients (a little Lovecraft reference for you) sleep beneath the earth. They require frequent human sacrifies. If they don’t get them, they’ll rise and destroy mankind. Resourceful humans have figured out a solution: In secluded underground locations, all over the planet, they trap unsuspecting people into cliched horror scenarios, get their kills, and send the blood down to the Ancients to shut ‘em up.

It’s a fun concept with only a few logic holes. The American trope-bunker — run by two bored bureaucrats played perfectly by Brad Whitford and Richard Jenkins — makes sure that four or five archetypes get killed. The archetypes: a Fool, a Whore, an Athlete, a Scholar, and a Virgin. (The virgin doesn’t NEED to be killed, necessarily. See: Every horror movie ever, and the Last Girl trope.) But an extremely funny side-story shows us that the usually-successful Japanese trope-bunker is trying to appease the Ancients with a sort of Ringu-rip-off, a ghost girl terrorizing a room of schoolchildren. It’s hilarious (particularly when it fails and Jenkins yells “Fuck you!” at all of the tiny children on his screen), but… are the five archetypes present in a Japanese girl’s school? I’m skeptical.

NONETHELESS: The movie gives a set of five undergrads, all credible spouters of Whedonesque dialogue, who fit the archetypes almost perfectly. (We have a lot of fun with the “almosts.” The jock, played by Chris Hemsworth, is actually a Sociology major with a working expertise of Soviet history. The “virgin” isn’t actually a virgin, so the “director” of the conspiracy shrugs that “we work with what we’ve got.”) They play their parts. It’s the “Fool,” a pothead played by Fran Kranz, who assumes that the weirdness afflicting them is being orchestrated somehow. He and the Virgin (Kristen Connolly, a soap opera actress like Sarah Michelle Gellar once was) manage to unravel the conspiracy. In so doing, they… make possible the gruesome murder of hundreds of bureaucrats, then destroy the world.

Perhaps I haven’t sold you on this movie. Very well. Two words: Killer unicorn.

The Hunger Games (2012)

Suzanne Collins’s dystopian trilogy is written in the first person, from the perspective of a resourceful, sarcastic, unforgettable girl. For unfair reasons — similar pop cultural timing — I compare Katniss Everdeen to Harry Potter and Bella Swan, and Katniss comes out on top. She’s a wonderful bullshit-caller. She’s realistic and guarded about boys. She’s a fount of witty observations about the insane society she was born into, where twelve tattered Districts provide for a decadent Capitol. (My friend and colleague Matthew Yglesias explains how this works.)

The film adaptation of the first novel gives the Katniss role to Jennifer Lawrence, an approachably gorgeous actress who slummed in TV, then broke big in the fine 2010 sleeper Winter’s Bone, then appeared in The Beaver for some reason. She’s a star now, even though her Katniss is less than I hoped for. The film is, well, a film. There’s no first-person musing. We know that Katniss is smart and wry because she stars cold through the parade of idiots making her life harder — and eventually trying to kill her.

I’m leading with my only complaint. This is just a terrific blockbuster, disorienting and absorbing. The art direction is by Tom Stern, who honed his craft on a lot of crap (the horribly failed J. Edgar), beautifully frames the gingham poverty of District 12 and the Caprica-esque sleaze of the Capitol. Director Gary Ross — who previously directed two lame period pieces — puts his camera sickeningly close to the action. Look at thee start of the Games, when tributes are permitted to run toward a stash of weapons. It’s a perfect chance for them to kill each other. We see them do it with quick shots of bloody weapons raised after striking, knives flying too fast to track.

21 Jump Street (2012)

Surprisingly great slackjaw comedy.

Chronicle (2012)

“I remember you,” says Steve (Michael B. Jordan) to Andrew (Dante DeHaan), as the two of them walk to check out a hole in the ground. “You wore that hoody every day to homeroom.”

Subtle, isn’t it? In the first 15 minutes, Josh Trank and Max Landis’s “Chronicle” has shown us that Andrew has a screaming, abusive father, a dying mother, a gallery of exciting bullies, a cool cousin (a different kind of problem there) — and now, a habit of dressing like the kid who shoots up the school. Another title for this movie might be “X-Columbine.” But I don’t want to get too snarky, because the creators are both several years younger than me, and they’re there while I’m here.

“Chronicle” is a good-looking, diverting movie, but derivative as all hell. Non-nerds might not notice this. Nerds, the sort of people who’ve dreamed about the situation Andrew, Steve, and cousin Matt get into, will notice. The most evocative images call back “Superman” (you’ll believe a sociopath can fly!) or, more often, “Akira” (when Andrew levitates and some pebbles come with him; when he goes on a rampage wearing tattered hospital garb).

And is it good? It’s fine.

Tim and Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie (2012)

Let us give thanks that producers keep giving money to Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim. They don’t even try to hide that they’re in the business of avante garde, audience-limiting weirdness. So they made a movie about it: Tommy Schlaang (Frank Langella!) gives two idiots a billion dollars to adapt a poem about a guy who wears a suit made of diamonds. They spend the money on real diamonds and a Johnny Depp impersonator. (He does look like Johnny Depp.)

Start here.

The Fall (2006) – Occasionally beautiful but pointless twaddle from a music video director.

Never Let Me Go (2010) – Passable sci-fi/coming of age stuff, like Merchant Ivory does “Logan’s Run.”

Win Win (2011) – Fine pedestrian middle class drama.

Bridesmaids (2011) – Ropey but brilliant.