Dir: Eli Roth. Starring: Rider Strong, Jordan Ladd, James DeBello, Cerina Vincent, Joey Kern.
Cabin Fever is a well-directed debut, it taps into some our new millennial anxieties quite cutely, but unfortunately finishes in the kind of dime-story irony and referential cliché that we’ve come to expect from horror these days.
A group of college graduates are headed out into the woods for a celebratory week. There’s an amorous couple, the Thwarted Desire Boy, and his stupid, violent, buddy who is no doubt going to do something stupid and violent, and trigger the horror this bunch so richly deserve (these movies are always so moral!). The monster this time is a virus, and it strikes quickly and disgustingly. Think tonsillitis meets ebola.
As the young victims try to escape the virus, they come across a series of Twin Peaks-like backwoods locals. There’s a kind of Deliverance rural anxiety theme at war here with an Outbreak-germ phobia, and mostly it works. A sort paradigm shift within the genre, if you will. What doesn’t work is the uneven script. First-timer Eli Roth has directed this film really well, but the screenplay is a little bit patchy. Some things – nice pacing, hints of characterisation – work well, but others (the whole Deliverance side of the story) do not, and I have to say, I spent most of the movie waiting to be scared. Once he breaks out the tension, however, Roth ratchets it up very well. The idea of a virus shouldn’ t be particularly scary: it doesn’t move fast, follows a fairly predictable pattern, but
Roth knows how to handle a camera, and a reasonably good cast make a difference. The violence towards the end of the film - coming out of virtually nowhere as it does - is going to make even the most hardened viewer squirm. Some very simple make up effects combine with a leisurely camera and form a couple of genuinely gross moments. Instead of desensitised buckets of gore, Roth has used his budget sparingly, and I think it works.
So, if you go to see Cabin Fever, ignore the histrionic praise of the street press: this film is not Brain Dead, or The Exorcist. It does, however, show a bit of promise and isn’t wilfully crap. For any fan of horror, that should be enough.
B-
Patrick Garson.
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