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CABIN
FEVER Rating:  (out of 5 stars)Director: Eli Roth Producers: Eli Roth, Lauren Moews, Sam Froelich, Evan Astrowsky Writers: Eli Roth, Randy Pearlstein Director of Photography: Scott Kevan Cast: Rider Strong, Jordan Ladd, Joey Kern, Cerina Vincent, James DeBello Visit the IMDB page for full cast and crew |
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This is a wretched movie, and not in a good way. It's a horror movie about a flesh-eating virus but somehow isn't scary. Unpleasant, yes, I'll grant the filmmakers that. But as for scary -- flesh-eating viruses, now those are scary. They're simple, focused. They don't dick around with self-parody or campy humor -- those bastards just chow down. Maybe Cabin Fever should have been about red ants -- the picnic from hell! Then its tone would have been perfect.
The story's setup, perfunctory yet slow, establishes what a long 94 minutes we're in for. Five college kids rent a cabin in the woods -- they're the kind of group that assembles in movies like this, and nowhere else. There's the hot girl (Cerina Vincent) and her horny boyfriend (Joey Kern), plus a short guy (Rider Strong) and a girl (Jordan Ladd) he's hot for, but they've always just been friends… (I can't overemphasize this: the 94 minutes are LONG.) There's also Bert (James DeBello), who is too dumb to feel awkward or lonely. While the tall couple has sex and the short couple kisses, Bert lights things on fire and shoots at squirrels.
Oh, and eventually, after we've met more characters, and watched the short people audition for Dawson's Creek, and heard a long, pointless story around the campfire -- while the couples sit together, Bert burns some marshmallows -- something else happens… oh yes, the flesh-eating virus! They get infected. Bad times all around.
The virus is less gory, and the movie less violent, than expected. It's meant to scare us in a sober, dermatological way, and there's lots of practical conversation about getting their truck fixed, quarantining the victims, etc. But it's also a self-conscious comedy, mocking horror-film clichés (what a fresh concept!), generally by enacting those clichés in a dull fashion -- but with irony! For this they're charging nine dollars?!
There were some people laughing at the screening I saw, but not many, and the guy who giggled all the way through sounded like Beavis. It's a form of humor I just can't understand. The biggest laugh, for example, came when a bad actor gave a big speech and stormed away in a hammy fashion. I mean, really. If you really need "horror" and "comedy" mixed like this, puke in a bucket and watch a Brady Bunch rerun. It's cheaper.
The cast, I should mention, is not entirely awful. Cerina Vincent, a former Miss Teen Nevada, plays Marcy, the one with the hot body. It's a crucial role, establishing the dramatic stakes, and Ms. Vincent's body gives a transcendent performance.
What are we to make of her character though? She seems a practical person until, rattled by the presence of a contagious, flesh-eating virus, she gets horny. Fair enough. But after sex, fearing that she's caught the flesh-eating virus, she decides to shave her legs! Bad, Marcy! No! Now at this point some viewers were laughing, but the scene plays out as straight -- after a while, Marcy realizes that she's cut the flesh off her legs, and she starts crying, convincingly, and it's sad. Then she staggers outside on her bloody, fleshless legs, and gets dismembered by a dog -- in a scene shot with relative taste and discretion!
Am I just not getting it? There is a very distinct sense of humor here, and it's present in about half the scenes (alternating with ones that seem serious, and are thus merely grotesque). There are lots of odd little dynamics at work. There are the hillbilly locals, who keep showing up from a different film altogether, with clichés all their own. There is the film's obsession with sex as a vile, disgusting force, when Ms. Vincent's body offers such proof to the contrary.
Ultimately, Cabin Fever confused me. Why do the filmmakers think anyone will like it? A realistic thriller, or an all-out bloodbath (comic or not) based on this premise could be scary, or entertaining -- but they've settled for a low-key, deadpan approach that's simply boring. It does nothing to raise or lower the bar, in a genre that's now exhausted on two levels -- what's the point of a movie that comments on itself but has nothing to say?
(A Lions Gate Films release. Opens
in wide release on September 12, 2003.)
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