There’s something satisfying about a horror film that sticks to the basics and executes them well. The Last Cabin, directed by Brendan Rudnicki, doesn’t aim to revolutionize the genre but delivers exactly what horror fans are looking for. If hearing “a group of friends head to an abandoned cabin” makes you lean in rather than groan, this one’s worth your time.
Hope (Isabella Bobadilla), Ben (Brendan Goshay), and Shawn (Tanner Kongdara) rent out a cabin in the woods to use as their base of operations. The trio is venturing forth to shoot their film over the next few days. No sooner does the crew toast themselves congratulations than they are beset by three men in clown masks. The eerie threesome stalks, terrorizes, and attempts to kill the filmmakers. Can Hope, Ben, and Shawn survive? Why are the masked killers targeting them?
We’ve seen cabins. We’ve seen woods. We’ve seen killers in masks in those cabins in the woods. But The Last Cabin offers an impressively unnerving sense of immediacy thanks to its commitment to the found footage format. Instead of sitting at a safe distance, we’re jammed right into the action, making the viewer feel like a reluctant participant, not just an observer, watching events unravel through the lens of the crew’s camera. That voyeuristic setup, as familiar as it is, works wonders here. It draws you in, makes the shadows seem darker, and adds just enough realism to make you hesitate before looking too far ahead.
“No sooner does the crew toast themselves congratulations than they are beset by three men in clown masks.”
Co-writers Brendan Rudnicki and Kellan Rudnicki don’t make this an overly scripted quip factory, something that plagues so many micro-budget horror flicks. There’s a natural chemistry between the leads, and that’s a big part of what anchors the experience. Their banter is believable in the way actual people talk. Bobadilla is particularly strong, delivering a performance that grounds the horror in something real. When the tension ramps up, she doesn’t overplay it. She reacts like someone who’s actually trying not to die. Goshay holds his own as well. Together, they sell the stakes without overselling the scenario.
Now, let’s talk about the kills! They’re stop-eating-during-the-movie gory, and they’re creative. These aren’t just your standard stabbings and slashes. There’s a rawness to the violence that occasionally flirts with sadism, but The Last Cabin never feels exploitative, just deeply uncomfortable. And that, perhaps, is the most effective element: it’s brutal without being over the top, and it knows exactly how far to push without turning into self-parody.
The pacing is where the film really gets it right. It doesn’t drag its feet, but it also doesn’t go full throttle out of the gate. Instead, the narrative walks that fine line between atmospheric build-up and payoff. You get enough downtime to breathe before the next moment of dread creeps in. Crucially, the screenplay resists the urge to overexplain anything. And that makes it all the more disturbing. Sometimes, the scariest thing is not knowing, and that is something Rudnicki gets.
Is The Last Cabin a game changer? No. Is it a tight, effective, and well-acted horror outing that gives genre fans precisely what they came for, with a little more polish than expected? Absolutely. It’s a strong entry in the found footage canon. The kills are brutal enough to make you triple-check the locks on your next weekend getaway. So, maybe don’t plan any remote cabin trips for a while.
"…tight, effective, and well-acted..."
