Review of Cabin Fever (2003) by Katley M — 15 Jul 2010

Perhaps one of my favorite movies ever made is Eli Roth's Cabin Fever. I find it astonishing how cliché' this movie could have been. The plot is about a group of high school friends that decide to celebrate their graduation by renting a cabin in the middle of the woods.

That is until someone decides to crash the party and infect the kids with a flesh eating virus. This could have easily been a crappy zombie flick or a cheesy town in the middle of nowhere surrounded by killers type of movie.

Even the group paranoia and denial could have been done the wrong way and have been made into that typical "you have it", "no I don't " routine, but somehow Roth managed to skip around all the stereo-typical bull and rather give us something fun, entertaining, gory, and downright creepy.

I love the vibe this movie had. It was a throwback to the 70's and 80's in its atmosphere. But what I really love was that Roth didn't find the need to make the image all dicey and distorted to make that vibe, he actually used directing techniques.

(Put on your surprised face) Even though it had a good homage to those movies, it didn't look like them, you can't ask for better than that. Gore, three words, leg shaving scene. Probably the one scene in horror movies in the past decade that will without a shadow of a doubt go down in history.

But we also get some mangled faces, gunshot wounds, some loose limbs, lots of blood flinging, no lack of the red stuff here. Acting, Rider Strong is the lead here, and the one who you will spend the majority of the movie watching, and he did a stand up job as the love sick puppy forced to take a shovel to his girls head.

James DeBello was a fun comedic relief, who stole a few scenes and was likeable even when he was whining about losing his skin. Giuseppe Andrews was yet another comic relief and was hilarious and was damn good at playing the dumb partying cop down for a good time.

As for the chicks, we get the good girl and the slut. What can I say? One of my favorite parts of watching a Roth movie is the fact that he can take a story that makes even the biggest of men go weak at the knees, and adds in some of the funniest characters imaginable, and it just takes a scary movie from being too scary, to enjoyable to watch, without crossing the line to horror-comedy, it's a delicate thing to do, but every time he does it perfectly.

I'm pretty sure that when it comes to a kick-ass horror movie this is as close to perfect as we will ever get. If you have not already go check this one out immediately, I repeat immediately.