Cabin Fever (2002)

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.

Fmovies: Eli Roth's debut, Cabin Fever, seems to be hated by the majority on IMDb and many other critics. I, however, found this to be a rather enjoyable little film that just falls short of being great. To sum up this movie: take a bit of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, a bit of The Evil Dead, a couple of elements from The Thing and Last House on the Left and you have Cabin Fever. A horror movie about five teenagers going to holiday in a cabin in the woods after college where the nearest town is filled with hicks and everything is slowly getting infected by an unknown virus which starts to turn everyone against each other. Roth blends horror with a small amount of comedy which suits this type of movie.

The five teens are a mixed bunch (the dumb guy, the horny couple and the innocent couple). Most of them swear, drink, have wild sex and smoke drugs and because of this may seem annoying and clichéd, on the contrary, Roth has captured the attitude of what teenagers were (and still are) like. We do all that they do (well, not so much drugs..) and to me that makes them more realistic. The locals aren't so realistic and seem to be their for comic relief and body count (which isn't a bad thing). There is plenty of gore and plenty of scenes to make you squirm in disgust.

The reason I don't give this a really high score is because the pacing seemed jumbled to me. For me, the running time was really short and there were not enough scares throughout. This movie had potential to be more than the final product but I respect what Roth has done and considering it was his first movie it is remarkably good and for that I give it:

8/10

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.

Cabin Fever fmovies. This film has been unfairly judged! It is in fact a very good 80's style, Splatter, B-movie. It shys away from the self referencing humor plague that Scream started and succeeds in being a very strange splatter/comedy. Several reviews have been posted that say the characters are unlikable and do illogical things through the course of the movie. The characters are very good representations of the youth of the late 90's. The hunting squirrels joke is a perfect example. When asked why he is hunting the squirrels, the character replies, "Cause their gay". How many times have you heard a teen respond to a question in such a manner? Eli Roth has captured very well the essence of of being a teenager in this very cynical society.The actions the characters take are, in context, very believable. Ask yourself, if you were in a situation where you had to deal with the very likely possibility of becoming infected with a horrible flesh-eating disease, would you be the first to lend a helping hand to the infected? Another thing that has been trashed by many reviews is the strange sense of humor the film has. The pancakes scene in particular. The humor in the film is the strange sort you would more likely find in a Troma film (not the sex/toilet variety, though)While it's not for everyone, the sense of fun the movie has about itself is more suited to hardcore B-movie fans than mainstream audiences. Eli Roth hearkens back to a time when movies weren't always about psychological thrills,bad twist endings, and pretentious artistic "meanings", when they were about fun. It's a great movie to sit around with some friends and watch. So please, don't judge it so harshly, just because it's a movie to be taken straight with no shocking hidden meanings or twists. Hopefully this film will find it's audience with the cult movie crowd. Highly recommended to anyone with a love of B-Movie cinema.

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.