Cottage-Gore: 8 Horror Movies and Shows Set in Cabins

This article covers the topic of horror movies and television series that take place in or around remote cabin settings.

When you’ve got cabin fever, the only prescription is … horror movies! Whether the weather is less than favorable, you’re feeling less than your best, or you’re trying to figure out how to “relax” (whatever that means) with some well-earned time off, restlessness can get to all of us.

A fancy term for feeling a little stir-crazy, anxious, or irritable during a period of isolation, cabin fever isn’t a real sickness. But you know what might make you feel better? Watching a movie or show about people who are even worse off than you — the horror genre excels at that.

Thanks to regional mythology, remote settings, and a general fear of the untamed wilds, creepy woodland cabins are a staple of many iconic scary stories that will have you ducking under the blankets and feeling less terrible about your own situation. So here are eight recommendations next time you start to feel that itch…

• The Cabin in the Woods
• Misery
• Yellowjackets
• Evil Dead
• Tucker and Dale vs. Evil
• Friday the 13th
• Cabin Fever
• The Strangers

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The Cabin in the Woods

Young adults on vacation in a remote cabin in the woods — sounds like a perfect formula for a horror film, right? Well, not before an underground facility of scientists makes some behavioral modifications. By now, the plot twist of The Cabin in the Woods is well-known for its skewering of horror movie character tropes and stock monster scenarios. But it’s iconic for a reason, doing for 2010s audiences what Scream did for the ’90s.

The titular cabin is chock-full of objects and triggers and secret vents that allow the lab coats to manipulate variables in the vacationers’ story. Inhibition-lowering chemicals? Check. Creepy decor with hidden peepholes? Check. And don’t forget to check out the basement full of objects, each with its own cursed backstory and matching horror beyond human comprehension! Maybe next time they’ll choose the mermaids…

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Misery

There’s toxic fandom, and then there’s whatever Annie Wilkes has going on! Stephen King’s classic story about an injured author being nursed back to health by an obsessive fan is a perfect encapsulation of the restless insanity of cabin fever. Novelist Paul Sheldon is at the mercy of Annie Wilkes after crashing his car in a blizzard, as she withholds contact from the outside world and forces him to rewrite his Misery manuscript that she’s unhappy with.

Out of one idyllic cabin and into a remote home, this film captures the feeling of helplessness that comes especially with long recovery (even without a captor prolonging your struggles). You might wanna take a lap around the house to shake off the icicles after this one.

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Yellowjackets

Technically the only television series on this list (unless you count F13 and Evil Dead spinoffs), Yellowjackets has plenty of story to sink your teeth into and chew on over the course of its three seasons, with a fourth and final season on the way. The show is split across two timelines following a team of teenage soccer players after a plane crash in the Canadian wilderness, reconnecting with the survivors whose shared past refuses to stay buried.

The season 1 episode “The Dollhouse” introduces an abandoned cabin that provides shelter to the girls for nearly half the series, especially during the snowed-in sophomore outing. It’s claustrophobic, creepy, and eventually feels like home — just don’t mind the dead guy upstairs.

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Evil Dead

A movie so groovy they made it twice. Whether you’re watching the original Evil Dead, its sequel Evil Dead II, the spinoff TV series Ash vs. Evil Dead, or the modern remakes, you’re in for one hell of a good time. (Army of Darkness is a little less cabin, a little more medieval.) After the debut outing, the series went for a horror-comedy tone, but kept the cabin as the perfect location for woodland weirdness.

The Evil Dead cabin (also called the Knowby cabin) is the center of supernatural happenings thanks to Professor Knowby’s unleashing of the Necronomicon Ex-Mortis. The grounds are haunted by demon spirits called the Deadites and the basement cellar just happens to be the perfect place to stash a body on short notice.

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Tucker and Dale vs. Evil

Another self-aware horror comedy that bucks the rules of your standard haunted cabin fare, Tucker and Dale vs. Evil’s, well, evil is just misunderstood. After two well-meaning hillbillies buy an abandoned cabin to refurbish, a group of college kids camping in the woods mistake them for murderous, kidnapping savages. What ensues is a Rube Goldberg machine of classic slasher tropes turned on their head to hilarious effect.

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Friday the 13th

But which Friday the 13th are you referring to, you might ask? You decide! Okay, maybe not the one where Jason takes Manhattan or goes to outer space, but a good portion of the franchise is set in the woodland region of Camp Crystal Lake. Honestly, these films laid the groundwork for a lot of the others on this list.

Here you’ll find fun summer camp structures and cabins full of counselors just waiting to meet their demise at the hands of the Voorhees family. If you had to pick just one (ice pick, even), Friday the 13th Part 2 gives audiences its first dose of burlap sack-wearing Jason Voorhees and plenty more victims waiting to be stalked and stabbed for their summer camp callousness.

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Cabin Fever

The only one of these films in which the cabin fever is a literal flesh-eating disease, 2002’s Cabin Fever was a skin-crawling sleeper hit. A group of college students (it’s always college students!) take a vacation in the fall to a remote cabin, only to encounter a problem when a hermit in the woods exposes them to a terrible pathogen he contracted from a dead dog.

For those who don’t have fond memories of isolation and quarantine, this film might be a little much to contend with. The disease quickly tears through not only the group, but their skin as well, and it leads to a worrying breach in containment as everyone fails to contain the spread. Whenever you do settle in for a viewing of this one, pour yourself a nice drink. Just maybe skip the lemonade.

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The Strangers

The Strangers has gained cult status for its minimalist approach to the home invasion subgenre of horror films. Tense and atmospheric without being over the top, the movie sees a couple’s stay in a vacation home interrupted by three mask-wearing strangers known as Dollface, Pin-Up Girl, and the Man in the Mask.

This psychological thriller will certainly keep your mind off your own boredom about being indoors, but it might also make you check all the locks and windows twice just to be safe. And maybe don’t open the front door.

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Are there any other creepy cabin movies or shows you think should be on this list? Which of the cabins mentioned here do you think you could survive in?

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