Cabin Fever

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 horrible teens arrive at a small town the residents of which are even more horrible, and there's also superaids in the water supply. The superaids is incidental, and I'd argue it's even a red herring of a threat. The real threat is obviously how a supernaturally horrible human being everybody is.

In the universe of Cabin Fever, no problem ever gets solved since it is always someone else's problem, until it becomes everyone's problem at which point no one has the power to solve it. It is a downward spiral, a representation of entropy that we are all very familiar with in real life and we know from our real life experience that any and every problem the characters in this film face will result in a major catastrophe due to people's unwillingness to deal with it at any of its stages.

Although there are a few intolerably disgusting frames that might get to you, it's more comedy than horror. Because you can't really feel too bad for anyone dying in agony when they kind of all deserve it. I'd argue we shouldn't feel bad, neither for the characters nor for their reflections in real life. Just keep selling the superaids lemonade like the good "BUSINESSMEN" we all are and get over it.

Cabin Fever was better than I expected but there were some things that weren't that good. For the most part the movie was a well made horror film that tells the story of five college friends on vacation at a remote mountain cabin when one of them contacts a flesh-eating virus. The movie is a somewhat realistic look at how people would react to such a situation. The movie stars Rider Strong (from Boy Meets World), Jordan Ladd (Broken Lizard Club Dread), Cierina Vincent (whose "spolier" featured in two steamy sex scenes one of which is good and another is okay at first then it gets weird. For those of you who have seen it. You know what I mean), James DeBello (from Detriot Rock City), Joey Kern, and the rest of the cast of unknowns are believable in their roles. I didn't really like the ending which could've been better and the dialogue wasn't the greatest at times but overall Cabin Fever is an effective horror thriller better than others that have come out recently from writer/director Eli Roth the man behind Hostel and Hostel Part 2 which at least to me weren't as good as this one. So if you're in the mood for a decent horror thriller you can go wrong with Cabin Fever. It (for the most part) delivers on whats expected from these kind of movies.

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.

Before Cabin Fever came out.. the word in the horror world was that Cabin Fever is one of the most gruesome, bloodiest, scariest, funniest, craziest horror movie ever. So when it opened in theaters, everyone's expectation was sky high ..even mine. Yes, I was kind of disappointed with Cabin Fever because it was hyped so much. I mean you had Peter Jackson the director of Lord of the Rings saying in the trailer this is one of best horror movie he's ever seen. Now if I did not go in with such huge expectations, I could had enjoyed it for what it was. I really started enjoying Cabin Fever once it started playing on cable. Every time it comes on I watch it and I begin to love this film a lot more.

Cabin Fever is directed by up and comer Eli Roth. He's a guy that loves horror films and mentioned in several articles this movie pay homage to his favorites like Evil Dead.

Cabin Fever is about 5 college kids who had just finish test finals and are enjoying some relaxation and fun in a cabin in the woods but the fun is cut short when they learn a flesh eating bacteria disease is around. The main character Paul is played by Boy Meets World actor Rider Strong. Rider was surprisingly good in this movie and Paul is the character you root for the most to not get the disease.

The movie is funny. The funniest movie ever? Hell no! This movie is scary. The scariest movie ever? Hell no! This movie is bloody. The bloodiest? Hell no! So I'm finally enjoying the movie for what it's worth and it is and has a potential to end up being a horror movie classic. There are tons of films that people hated when it first came out and then come to love it semi years later. Cabin Fever I believe is one of them.