I wouldn't shave your legs right now...

Cabin Fever

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A group of five teenagers rent a cottage in some small backwoods town, with the intent of doing some serious partying. There's a dating couple, a couple that wants to be dating and the single party machine guy. All begins well, but when a stranger shows up at the cottage, all plans go awry. Especially when said stranger's flesh is rotting off and the disease is more contagious than the Rhinovirus.

This is the premise for Eli Roth's Cabin Fever. In case you don't recognize the name, Roth directed one of my other favourite movies, Hostel (see earlier review) and the coming soon surprise, Hostel II.

But here's the thing: I liked Cabin Fever. I'm a big fan of the teenagers at the cottage horror movie. Evil Dead is one of my favourite movies. And this one takes that original, now-clicheed, premise of 'something evil in the woods' and makes it a little bit different than most of the other movies that have borrowed this time-tested premise. Granted, most of the horror clichees pop up: there's a sex scene within the first couple minutes of the movie (yes, those people end up dying), there's the creepy music, there's the bump-in-the-night-that-turns-out-to-be-a-cat (actually, a former x-gamer with a huge bag of pot), there's the creepy locals, and there's Party Cop. Party Cop isn't necessairily a clichee... just a very strange character.

This movie doesn't try too hard to be serious. It knows its a b-movie and almost relishes said fact. There are copious amounts of blood, but given the nature of the disease, it isn't out of place. The disease seems to infect the people and basically rot them from the inside out. My favourite scene is where a girl, once infected, decides to have a bath and shave her legs, where as she drags the razor across her shin, the skin comes off in the same stroke. There are a couple of other good scenes that made me think, 'Well, really, if something like this did happen, I think I might do the same thing.' Even if it is putting loved ones out of their misery with a pick-axe.

I seem to think I'll catch some flack for giving Cabin Fever three stars out of five. Its a known fact that I love the b-grade cinema. This movie is one of a small group of recent movies that are current b-grade classics. There's a quote on the box from Peter Jackson that says something about how much he loves Cabin Fever. If Peter Jackson can love it, so can I. If I had seen this movie before Roth's second movie (Hostel), I'm sure I would be excited for his future releases.

I now only plead with Eli Roth to go back to making good movies ( ! ) like Cabin Fever and stop making pablum like the Hostel movies.