Posted: 09/16/03Cabin Fever (2003)
by Gary Schultz
High praise for first time director Eli Roth's scare fest.
Posted: 09/16/03Cabin Fever (2003)
by Barry Meyer
A screaming, bloody mess of a horror movie.
Some could very easily consider Cabin Fever a bad movie, but for a cult fan its a beautiful, gory ride, taking unbalanced hormonal teenagers and subjecting them to various acts of self-inflected human cruelty. What we have here is new comer Eli Roths depiction of cabin horror, spoon feeding us graphic violence, sex, gore and bad one liners from relatively uninteresting main characters. Although this isn't to say the characters don't have their own glory moments.
The story starts with five college friends who rent a remote cabin in the woods to celebrate the end of their college life. After a brief encounter with the local towns freaky rednecks, the teenagers find the time to start the partying. While having some beers around the campfire they're approached by a strange man with seriously scabbed corroded skin vomiting blood everywhere. Fearing infection themselves, they use any methods necessary to get rid of the infected man. Of course this is all too late. The result is their only vehicle is trashed and they are left at the cabin in the middle of nowhere with no transportation. Now things go from bad to worse as the same flesh-eating virus spreads among the friends. Paranoia sets in and the evil side of human nature forces them to turn against each other. Now the fun begins.
The cast consists of the lead Rider Strong (Boy Meets World), who went crazy a little quickly in the film, Jordan Ladd (Never Been Kissed), Joey Kern (Super Troopers, Grind) and Cerina Vincent (Not Another Teen Movie) who got naked in the first fifteen minutes of the movie. Most of the character's early interactions were pretty stereotypical and felt kind of dumbed down, perhaps to appeal to a young crowd or they were just falling into the cult stereotype that we should expect from the genre. Most of these early scenes are stole by James De Bollo (Detroit Rock City) who played thick-headed Bert, who fears getting infected and gay squirrels. I would have loved to seen more of Giuseppe Andrews (Detroit Rock City) who played the off beat Deputy Winston who just wanted to party with under aged girls. The secondary characters really help to level the environment too. I loved the old, gay convenience store worker, the rednecks and Dennis the mullet boy. Oh and I'm pretty sure it was Eli Roth playing Grim the stoner with his super large pillow of weed and his dog who later would get infected and try to kill everybody.
Cabin Fever, especially for a first horror film is well made and beautifully photographed. Eli has a strong knowledge of the genre; it's stereotypes and how to deliver something that is true to the horror/dark comedy genre, which is often categorized as the "cult genre." This however is also the Fever's problem because moviegoers that don't have a previous love for, or knowledge of the cult genre probably won't get the homage's and stereotypes. So for some it'll probably fall into the 'bad' movie category. My first attempt to see Cabin Fever was sold out. During my second attempt two people in front of me got up and exited with a half hour left of the film. For myself, a horror fan that appreciates all aspects of the genre, I enjoyed Cabin Fever very much. Paying respect to films like The Hills Have Eyes andm of coursem The Evil Dead, Cabin Fever will no doubt become a part of the cult scene and probably enjoyed at drunken college dorm parties for years to come.
So to sum it all up here's what we've learned: projectile blood vomit is a warning sign that you're probably going to die. Shovels can be your friend. Not all dogs are friendly. If you're gonna die anyway you might as well have sex and most importantly, "Don't sit next to Dennis." And if anyone can tell me what the hell is in the box referred to as "the kit" that the young, buzz cut redneck was carrying before he got a screwdriver in ear that would be great. Yes, I said screwdriver in the ear.
Gary Schultz is an indie filmmaker from Chicago. He works under an independent production company called Highertribe Productions and spends his days coordinating the Screenwriting Center for Columbia College.
There has been a lot of discussion about the lack of horror in horror movies these days, and Cabin Fever made the grand promise that it would be the resurrection of the classic 70s gore style horror. Director and co-writer Eli Roth echoed the dreary dismay of many horror fans by lamenting that the creepies have crept out of their favorite film genre, and Cabin Fever soon became the shining beacon that would lead the docile horror world out of its stale crypt and bring it back to its bloodied roots. But what was intended to be a revisionist nod to the gore movie, turned out to be just another uninspired rip-off that merely lifted the bones from the grave, and then drove another nine inch nail into the slowly dying horror genre casket.
You've heard the proverb that money is the root of all evil. Well, apparently it's also the death of all evil in horror movies. No doubt Roth's original concept and script was dripping with genuine chills and thrills, so much so that it got the attention of oddball maverick director David Lynch, whose name then attached a decent budget, and attracted a big FX company to boot. And herein lies the problem - not just with Cabin Fever but with horror movies in general - big money does not equal good horror. The simple law of low budget filmmaking is that with no money the filmmaker is forced to focus his imagination on how to creatively get the story across. But with gobs of cash at the ready the film turns into simply a toy for the filmmaker, and a cash cow for the producers. With a budget larger than Roth knew what to do with (and then some) he ignorantly forged ahead declaring that he was making his passionate tribute to low budget gore, while disregarding the simple notion that the sum total budgets of all the movies he professed to pay homage to were eclipsed by his one solitary movie. The greatest disappointment with Cabin Fever is that it had the bones of a terrific horror movie, and not just the ones exposed under the gory skin on the screen. There was a genuine enough twist on the old kids-in-the-woods routine with a flesh-eating virus taking the place of the usual hack-happy maniac on the loose; and there was a director/writer who seemed to have a sincere desire to make a real horror movie, worthy of the ones that he cherished himself. But somewhere along the dark path through the woods, Roth's passion got so tangled up in target demographics and focus groups, that when he finally made it out and to the theater he had a movie so fragmented in its personality that even Norman Bates would be left scratching his feeble head.
For a gore movie this film was embarrassingly timid, and it failed on several occasions to deliver the promised goods. Yeah, there were a mess of people with gunshot squibs exploding, but that's not necessarily even a horror staple. There were also several gallons of blood being slopped around, but even that's not necessarily a horror staple. Blame it on whomever you want - Roth, the studio, the test audience - but what kind of gore movie fails to show one person being killed in some manner that is unspeakable? There's a long drawn out build up of a feral dog that hangs around the fringes, growling and snapping its canines at the kids in the cabin, but when it finally lunges in for the big payoff attack, the audience witnesses nothing but a red hued POV shot of the dog's mad chase. Then it cuts to the dimly lit shot of the dog standing over its bloodied victim. No teeth ripping flesh from the screaming victim, no blood splattered incisors with dangling tendrils - nothing! Another scene has one of the cabin kids plunging a pointed branch into his attacker, killing him as he tries to crawl away. But for some reason the deed is done right out of camera range. Subtlety in a gore movie! What kind of gore movie is this? 'Baby's First Gore Movie'? (I predict that the DVD will have the directors cut with all of this footage back into place - but too little too late!)More puzzling was Roth's misguided attempts to inject humor into the mix. This is not to say that humor is an abject concept to horror, because, clearly when used correctly it can be a useful device - Hitchcock proved that very well. But Roth's inept attempts became so confusing at times that he seemed to be making a comedy instead of horror. Entire scenes were crafted which were played out purely for comic effect, and they even involved characters who stepped in to act all funny, only to completely disappear from the movie. It was as though the SNL cast stepped in to entertain the audience during an intermission from the horror movie. The result was just a pretentious display at how witty and clever the director thought he could be.
Roth has gleefully declared his love for horror movies in countless articles and interviews, and acknowledged that he took many cues from many films of which he is a fan of, and even unabashedly confessed that he lifted scenes and even songs from them. This is not an entirely rare occurrence in film - many directors have paid homage to their idols with cinematic displays of admiration. But there is a vast difference between finding inspiration is someone else's films - and collecting parts of them to make up your own.
Cabin Fever is an overwrought, overproduced display of the latest gory gadgetry, that seems more content with pleasing the studio heads than entertaining the audience. It's just too bad that Roth's passion for horror filmmaking doesn't equal his fanaticism for watching horror movies. Roth appears to be nothing but a sellout, who will now move on to be the next anointed savior of horror, alongside such failures as Kevin Williamson.
Barry Meyer is a writer who can't help but be soured by the fact that he can't return to the 70s.
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