It doesn't take an expert to work out that the darkly inventive minds behind The Cabin In The Woods belong to fans of horror movies.
Producer Joss Whedon is best known for his overwhelming union of superheros in Avengers Assemble on the big screen as well as Buffy The Vampire Slayer on television, while director Drew Goddard co-wrote the smash Cloverfield.
Five friends go on holiday in a cabin in the woods - what could possibly go wrong?
Before Whedon broke box office records with his Marvel franchise, he got together with Goddard to write this film, breathing new life into a genre staple of nubile teens looking for fun in a remote yet creepy country location and getting a whole lot more attention from the undead, the twisted and the sheer psychotic than they ever bargained for.
Watch closely and you will recognise nods to plenty of chilling 70s flicks from Halloween to Friday The 13th, where familiar horror rules were first established only for them to be neatly deconstructed here in the most terrifying of ways.
"I was more of a John Carpenter, Wes Craven kind of guy," says the softly spoken Whedon. "I remember the first Friday the 13th well, but it started to become like a series of killings and not a film. In a way that's the devolution of the horror film that this movie is about."
That's when horror raised the gore factor and exchanged plotting for shorthand, the so-called rules that meant copulating couples had to be punished by a killer in a hockey mask.
"I mean the rules are what they are, they're part of the film," Whedon adds. "I have a problem with a few of them, mainly where people act like complete idiots. But I love the idea of people going a dark, terrible place, just as I loved it when Hansel and Gretel did it."
That reference serves as a reminder that storytellers have been creeping out audiences for as long as stories have been told.
"I don't know anybody who works in horror who has successfully explained why horror is necessary or at all redeemable," Whedon smiles. "Yet I think it is both of those things. I love it. But it is absolutely a real conflict within yourself, because if the movie is well made you're rooting for the people to survive while desperately wanting them to be in more and more scary situations.
"Horror is about being afraid. When the horror movie began to devolve into a murder movie, a kill pic, that's where it gets sad. There was a time in horror films where people died, but they were character stories. They were more about the dread of something than about the thing itself."
In The Cabin In The Woods there is not only a rationale for the grisly goings on, but a pretty inventive one that harks right back to the gruesome side of humanity willing to sacrifice one to save many.
This serves not only to support the story as it unfolds on screen, but to hold a mirror to the audience who in some ways are just like the regular guys with highly irregular jobs played by Richard Jenkins and Bradley Whitford.
Their scenes also offer some much needed relief from the relentless tension and mounting apprehension that faces our five young victims heroes - who include Thor star Chris Hemsworth - in the aforementioned wood based cabin.
And it underlines how closely comedy and horror co-exist, as a scene might build to a suspenseful peak only to lead to false shock that produces a relieved laugh that in turn moves into a bigger fright still. It's a fine line but one that Whedon and Goddard's film treads expertly.
Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard at work on Cabin in the Woods
"You know, it is a very fine line. Luckily it's not a jarring thing to go from horror to comedy, people expect a certain amount of humour in a horror movie - these days anyway - and I do think they're very similar in that it's often an unexpected moment.
"But it is also very easy to topple off into camp. I loathe camp. For years people would say 'I love Buffy, it's so camp!' and I would just glare at them because it was the exact opposite of what I was trying to do.
"With a movie like this it does get just bizarre, and where Drew and I are having so much fun the trick is to make sure that we're not having so much fun that everything else stops. With a horror movie in particular there are times when you must shut the hell up, to just be scary."
And so it is, The Cabin In The Woods is every bit as scary as it needs to be, though like most well-directed horror films it's less explicitly horrific than you might remember after seeing it.
"There's definitely gore in this movie, some horrible things happen, but there's nowhere near as much as in the George Romero films, or a Paul Verhoeven movie. There's a certain amount of restraint, because Drew, like me is somewhat old school and the horror he wanted to evoke is something like Halloween. People get stabbed and whatnot, but it's not limbs flying about."
Underpinning it all is a story founded in a self contained logic, and the strength of the characters who are introduced to the audience. One of the most appealing among the hapless group is the wisecracking stoner Marty played by Fran Kranz.
"I liked that character the most," grins Whedon, "because I believe that I've been that character most of my life. Whatever situation I was in it was never about me, I was just the guy commenting on it. And the person that nobody takes seriously being the only person in the room who knows what's going on is something that I have felt in my life. It's something that I write about all the time."
But the headlines will inevitably belong to star Chris Hemsworth, who shot this film before his star-making turn in Thor, and then after The Cabin In The Woods reunited with Joss Whedon as his director to reprise the God of Thunder role for Marvel blockbuster The Avengers.
"There's a lovely symmetry to the whole thing," Whedon notes, "because when we were doing Cabin, Kenneth Branagh called me to ask me about Chris, because he was considering him for Thor.
"And then when I was first on The Avengers I had to get Ken on the phone to ask him about Chris as Thor, and about Tom Hiddleston too, and he walked me through that. So it was a nice little flip.
"Chris is so much fun to work with, he's such a good guy. He's just a very happy, centred guy. So it did not surprise me in the slightest. The moment we shot his first low angled close up both me and Drew went, 'oh yeah, he's a movie star.' Pretty soon everybody else was saying the same thing."
Most pleasing for Joss Whedon, one suspects, has been the fruitful working relationship with Drew Goddard on The Cabin In The Woods. They go back a decade or more, collaborating on various hit series and now a smart and chilling movie, and on this form you would not rule out the possibility of them working together again.
"We are very similar," Whedon explains. "We both have a passion and a joy in the thing - neither of us is afraid to be completely out of control. But there are also differences. Just given the fact that he's 10 years younger than I am, the things that we do in our spare time are very different.
"It's great to have that sort of back and forth, as well as the simpatico, to have a little bit of the flavour where that's Drew and that's me. There was a point where he was still in the editing room on and I was shooting an episode of Glee right before I started The Avengers.
"He called me, he was doing the sound mix and said he'd play me some stuff but said he was having trouble hearing because he'd been listening to monster roars all day. I said I couldn't hear very well either, because I'd been listening to Glee all day. And he was like 'That, Joss, is the difference between you and I.'"
Cabin In The Woods is available now on Blu-ray and DVD from Lionsgate. Watch the trailer below...