Cabin Fever

I saw this film at the Toronto International Film Festival (sept 02), and i was thoroughly impressed - of the 42 movies i saw, this was the best (even better than Bubba Ho-Tep, and i am a HUGE Bruce Campell fan). If you like movies like the Evil Dead trilogy, Last House on the Left, and Texas Chainsaw Massacre, you will love this movie. The acting is surprisingly good for a bunch of nobodies, the story is very well developed (even a few really funny jokes, always good in horror), and the gore is INCREDIBLE! For those of you that miss the extreme gore of the 70s and early 80s, you will not want to miss this film. If you like absurd, black humor, you might also enjoy it a lot. And if you want a change from the standard slasher in the woods as the villain, definitely check this out. I'm predicting this will be the best horror movie of the year.

Five friends finish their exams at college and decide to relax by taking a break in the woods. They arrive at their rented cabin and begin to party – a party that is broken by a sick man who stumbles into their midst. They try to fend him off but accidentally kill him. With their car wrecked and their mobile phones not working, they try to get help but their plans dramatically change when one of their number starts to show signs of having the same flesh eating virus that the stranger appeared to have.

I remembered this film getting reasonable reviews when it came out so I decided to give it a try on DVD to see for myself. The film opens with a group of teenagers going to a cabin where they encounter 'something' and then slowly turn on one another as the tension mounts up. So far, so genre.

However the film does well to overcome the fact that we can't see (or fight) the assailant and still manages to mount up the tension pretty well for the majority of the film. It is in the last 30 minutes where it goes to pot – where the film opens up the sheer apocalyptic potential the virus has, it chooses to focus on mad deer crashing through windscreen etc and starts to get quite silly. The lack of emotional involvement between the characters means that it is not quite as gripping as it should be – instead they turn on each other really quickly and only once do you feel for them.

The movie borrows heavily from other films (Evil Dead, teen movies, Night Of The Living Dead, Dawn Of The Dead) and in some ways it is not a problem, but in others it is a weakness – for example the climax of the action is obvious because it is clear what it is referencing. Roth does OK as director and generally manages to keep the tension up regardless of the slightly daffy script. Like I say – he loses it a bit in the final 30 minutes and I have mixed feelings about his final scene. He throws in a quite funny joke about perceptions but also tries to mix it with the horror of an impending outbreak around the US. Generally it isn't that great a film but it is one of the better of the 'teen slasher' genre that I think it more or less fits into.

The teen cast are too basic and they are only average – par for the course, if you will. DeBello is OK, Strong is quite enjoyable even if Kern got on my nerves bit. The two female leads are not as well used and a more cynical reviewer may suggest that the film makes lazy use of their naked bodies – again another genre cliché. The support cast are pretty country and do what is expected of them – none of them really do that well and the blame for that should be shared between the cast and the script, which doesn't give them more than cliché to really work with.

Overall I thought this was an OK film. Compared to the genre it is better than some of the other teen horrors that have been around recently although it isn't really that good. The first hour is pretty solid but the final half hour doesn't quite deliver on the potential that had been suggested up till this point. An enjoyable genre picture – nothing more, nothing less.

A group of college students head up to a remote cabin for a weekend of alcohol and sex, but when one of them becomes sick; they begin to turn on each other.

Cabin Fever is funnier than it is scary, in fact it is questionable whether it is in fact scary at all, but it is certainly entertaining and it's packed with gruesome gore and corny lines. The humour is not present because it's a low budget production or the acting is wooden, the effects are actually pretty good and so are the cast. Cabin Fever was funny because it was meant to be, it never takes itself seriously for a moment and the script is deliberately loaded with cheesy lines.

As a pure comedy its not great, as a horror movie its not great, but as an entertaining comedy horror flick is hits the spot, and it may well become a cult movie in years to come.

6/10

The morons from big city arrive to the cabin near the town full of moronic rednecks, there they get flesh eating bacteria from some of the locals. American ultra dumb teenagers, sex, alcohol, gore, US suburbs, country music - it's all there.

I'd describe it as a typical Eli Roth movie. It's pretty dark on the surface and full of gore, but also has completely ridiculous moments which make it a parody of itself. And while the "pancakes" is probably something of a on-set joke which made it to the script, the ending is just...yeah. The vibe of 1000 Maniacs is becoming stronger towards the end and the level of ridiculousness getting higher.

Director Eli Roth's CABIN FEVER starts out as if we're in for yet another story about killer hillbillies in the deep woods. Fortunately, Roth is just setting us up for a foray into hemorrhagic horror of the first order! The use of an Ebola-like, flesh-eating disease is both disgusting and innovative.

The main characters are college kids out to party in the titular structure. As such, they range from annoying, to highly unlikable, to utterly detestable. In spite of this, one actually feels a bit of empathy toward them, once the sickening stuff begins.

Love it or hate it, this movie is original...