Cabin Fever

Cabin Fever (2002)

Directed by: Eli Roth
Written by: Eli Roth and Randy Pearlstein
Starring: Rider Strong, Jordan Ladd, James DeBello, Cerina Vincent, Joey Kern, Arie Verveen, Robert Harris, Giuseppe Andrews, Eli Roth

Riff on the Evil Dead theme, about a group of young people who go out to a cabin in the woods and catch some horrible disease, a little bit like Ebola. When the vaguely demented locals learn that the kids are infected, they go about trying to stop it from spreading, so to speak.

I was expecting this movie to be pretty stupid, and it was, but it was still pretty fun to watch, from the ridiculous situations and bizarre supporting characters, to the idiotic but realistic dialogue (the characters call each other gay a lot. That made me laugh).

And it was nice and disgusting. Although not as disgusting as reading about Ebola. I figured I should actually read up on Ebola just so I knew what I was talking about and could defend my comparison if I had to. I also decided to look up smallpox and the bubonic plague just to put it into perspective.

It did kind of make this movie seem less fun in my mind though. Um... I wasn't really thinking about that when I was watching it though, I thought it was funny. I laughed.

Anyway, this is apparently Eli Roth's first major film or something, which is cool. It was good (I haven't seen either of the Hostel movies, so no comments there). Sort of self-aware horror picture, very referential of the genre, probably more than is necessary. It made me feel smug and we all know how I feel about that.

Ah well. I also thought it went on a little bit at the end just for the sake of being funny. And it was funny, but perhaps a little more than was necessary.

Still, overall I found it a pretty entertaining, gross-out post-horror film, all that Ebola stuff aside (fuck, man). That's all after the fact. Although that doesn't make it any less nasty. Well, whatevs.

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