Cabin Fever

Cabin Fever is without a doubt my favorite horror film of the new millennium. Given, we're only five years in and that's a bold statement to make, but it's a badge I wear with pride since it's a great throwback. True, there is a large audience out there that just doesn't like and/or get the movie, and that's their right since it is a divisive movie. All things said and done though, if you can't enjoy the movie, you at least can enjoy the style hearkening back to the heyday of 70's and 80's horror films.

We start out with a shot of a peaceful country lake. It could be anywhere at any time, allowing a level of normality that brings this kind of horror ever the closer to reality. A hermit (Arie Verveen), walks to his country shack with some food foraged for dinner. He tries to rouse his dog's attention, but finds the animal unresponsive. Going over, he pulls on the dog's leg as the rot.rips.the dog.in half. The hermit stumbles back in fear, only to be sprayed in the face with the dog's blood.

Flash cut over to an East Coast college campus, and to our five main characters. They're on a road trip to celebrate the end of finals, spending a week in an isolated cabin in the wilderness. The couple of Jeff (Joey Kern) and Marcy (Cerina Vincent), are just in it for the sex. Nice guy Paul (Rider Strong, yeah, the guy from Boy Meets World) has had a crush on the beautiful Karen (Jordan Ladd) since they were kids, and sees this weekend as the perfect chance to finally tell her how he feels. And, well, Bert (James DeBello), is just. well, no one really knows why Bert's there. He's just around to crack jokes, get drunk and shoot squirrels with a rifle because they're "gay." They're your perfectly normal group of college kids, a group you could, nay, should find in a teen sex comedy like American Pie. Well, this movie is kind of like American Pie, just if David Cronenberg were to direct it, but that's a side issue.

They get to the cabin after stopping at the local feed store to get supplies, along with the standard warning from the local old timer a la Crazy Ralph. Like any teenager in a horror movie, they don't take the man's advice to "be careful." The cabin is perfect, maybe a bit creepy, but it'll let them do what they want for the weekend and just have a good time. Jeff and Marcy immediately get to sex, Bert goes out in the woods to piss in a river and shoot at squirrels, while Paul and Karen stroll through the woods to have a kind talk with one another. It's a fun little montage that'd have made a great home movie, at least until Bert shoots at a squirrel and hits something, or someone else.

What was all fun and games quickly turns into a bloodbath and fight for survival that these kids will be lucky to survive, assuming any of them get out of it at all.

I know I'm in a minority here when I say it, but I believe Cabin Fever's story to be one of its strongest elements. Stylistically and referentially it is a throwback to all that we love about the 70's and 80's horror, with the sexy teenagers in an out of the way locale being slowly killed off by some unseen force. It's a labor of love for the heyday of horror, and one that has gotten an undeserved bad wrap for its slow spots.

Most of the kids you see in horror movies tend to belong there, which is partly what makes Cabin Fever so effective, in that these are a bunch of kids that actually don't belong in the splatter horror genre. No, these are the kids who belong in the teen sex comedy in the theater down the hall. Their innocence and immaturity doesn't warrant their imminent deaths, though in some realms it might justify it in the slightest bit. Joey Kern and Cerina Vincent are perfect as the sexed up uber-beautiful couple, who once things hit the fan fall apart faster than everyone else. James DeBello is the guy who never grew up once he got out of high school, and is forced to become the unlikely hero once things take a turn for the worse. Jordan Ladd could not be any more perfect as the embodiment of innocence and purity lost, while former Boy Meets World star Rider Strong is great as the guy who starts out nice and sweet, only to have to become the most brutal and violent person in the movie when his survival is on the line.

These kids start out the movie being the traditional American teens, only to end it as battered and blood-soaked visages of their former selves. While many movies have tried this with varying degrees of success, it hasn't been as well done as Cabin Fever in quite some time.

Eli Roth is one of the best up and coming horror directors out today, with Hostel's enormous success putting him on the fast track to bigger and better things, his directorial debut Cabin Fever often gets unfairly ignored or stepped upon. Quite simply, though it has its slow points, Cabin Fever is a great piece of modern horror. Taking themes and images that haven't been explored before and taking on a horror film that very few other people would have the balls to do, Eli Roth made a brave effort on his first time out of the gate. That being said, he's also very reverent of the genre, paying due homage to the classics that made his film even possible, referencing such classics as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Friday the 13 th , Last House on the Left, Dawn of the Dead, The Thing and even Creepshow 2 in such a way that it's not the Scream-style "LOOK AT US, WE'RE REFERENCING A CLASSIC, WOOOOOOOOOO!!!!" and so subtle to a point where true horror fans are perhaps the only ones who can see them all. This appreciation of the genre in addition to trying to use it to pave new ground makes Eli Roth one of the best new directors the genre has to offer, and if the success of his sophomore effort Hostel is any indication, he's on the way to being a major mainstream artist.

KNB can do no wrong in mine eyes, but since their effects are mostly relegated to making the red stuff run down the screen (and quite copiously at that), I'll relegate their praise to the gore section of the review.

So, yeah, like I said, KNB does great stuff. Be it zombies or monsters or armies of vampires, they've done it all and done it with professionalism second to none. When it comes to tackling a gore flick like Cabin Fever, they attacked the subject matter head on with great gusto. Let me say that this is indeed a gory movie, and though there are times when it is used to excess, more often than not the blood running down the screen is used to push the story forward. The consequences of this real life disease are put on screen with startling and unsettling accuracy, making it known that the most horrific things this world has to offer aren't confined to the imagination.

Conversely though, most of this film's violence stems from the paranoia and infighting that this virus causes. When society breaks down and the individual's survival instincts kick in, they're willing to do anything to survive, and when it comes to that this film channels the good old splatter films of the past. People are shot, stabbed, impaled, decapitated with shotguns, ripped in half and have harmonicas rammed down their throat in graphic detail. While the virus itself is kept real, this person to person violence is kept at an almost cartoony level that makes it known that this is just a movie, and that we're meant to have fun with it.

When you get an independent movie of any genre, you typically get some of the most heavy-handed and artsy filmmaking around that's hit or miss in the entertainment department. Luckily, independent horror of recent date (particularly those by Lions Gate Films/Lionsgate) has been ultimately satisfying and paving new ground in this post-Scream era. Cabin Fever is an independent film through and through, but instead of being pretentious, it takes the other route and makes no qualms about what it is. Cabin Fever is a balls to the wall horror/comedy, with blood literally running down the screen at points and few moments of restraint or good taste. Instead of making an art film, Eli Roth made a good old fashioned splatter flick, the kind of which hasn't been seen in ages, and must be commended for it.

I have little difficulty calling this film my favorite horror flick of the new millennium. It's an acquired taste, but it's unique style and pacing hearken back to a simpler time, when horror didn't need to be quick and edgy, and where the best scares tend to come from the simpler things. The fact that this is all based on a real condition makes it ever the more creepy. Well done film, I'd recommend it if you want something different. If not, well, feel free to trash it, you wouldn't be the first.