Cabin Fever Review

By Jake Dee

Director: Eli Roth
Starring: Rider Strong, Jordan Ladd
Released: 2002

Eli Roth’s Cabin Fever focuses on a group of college kids who retreat to a secluded woodland as a way to blow off pre-graduation steam. We’ve got the tough posing pretty boy named Jeff (Joey Kerns), the crude smack talking Burt (James DeBello), and the ultra hairy but emasculated sissy boy Paul (Rider Strong). The women, offering little range outside their hair color, are the blonde Karen (Jordan Ladd, who has become a horror regular) and the brunette Marcy (the beautiful Cerina Vincent). The quintet hops in a pick up and peels down the road, we instantly get the feel of a campy teen ’80s slasher flick. All the caricatures are represented! Only this isn’t your typical slasher, but more about the contagion of a deadly flesh eating virus.

The group stops at a backwoods market, meeting a gang of eccentrics including a boy named Dennis (Matthew Helms) who sports a prime time early 80s hair band mullet. It’s nasty! A Santa Claus looking clerk admonishes the group of a sinister presence lurking in the woods somewhere; they all just sort of shrug it off. Burt gets caught stealing a Snickers on the way out, embarrassingly gives it back. Distrust is built between them and the townsfolk.

The kids reach their deserted cabin; seek a little R&R. Paul and Karen go swimming, scenes that resemble a season one Dawson’s Creek episode (not like I watched). While they kiss like 6th graders, Jeff and Marcy waste no time doing the deed in the cabin bedroom, Burt playing voyeur thru the window before heading off to hunt squirrels. As he fires at the defenseless vermin, he accidentally grazes a man who randomly pops out of a ditch. The man is Henry the Hermit (Arie Verveen), covered in blood already, sick, hardly walking. He asks Burt for help, Burt walks away finishing his beer. (By the way, I heard Verveen is so method that he actually wanted to be lit ablaze during stunt scenes).

At night, the group amuse themselves by drinking, telling juvenile truth or dare type stories. They’re interrupted by a knock at the door! Its Henry the Hermit, face even more bloodied now, asking for further help. This time the guys physically fight him off, becoming exposed to the man’s infected blood. Infected by what, no one knows. A few moments later, we see the Hermit laying face down in a large reservoir.

Cut to Paul getting a glass of water for Karen. She imbibes the liquid, and by the next day is slowly ravaged by a nasty skin irritation where her flesh literally peels off, eventually down to the bone. It’s pretty gory, some decent make-up work by KNB EXF Inc! It becomes obvious (to the viewer initially) that the water supply is the host for such a disease, and anyone who unknowingly drinks the water will become infected. Like the disease itself, it takes a long time for the kids (Paul in particular) to become privy of what/where the infection is coming from.

To me, Cabin Fever will always be a comedy. If I were to catalogue it in a rental store, that’s where I’d put. Part of that is intentional (script), part of it unintentional. Take the hilarious Deputy Winston (Guiseppe Andrews) for example. His exchange with Paul the first time we meet him is so outrageous and over the top that it’s virtually impossible to tell how much was scripted and much was adlibbed by Andrews. His scenes add a surrealism here that counter the camp and kitsch of an otherwise typical teen slasher flick. All he wants to do is “party, man!” I can’t help but smile every time he’s on screen! You mix that with the bad acting moments, the asinine plot points, the over the top gore…you got yourself a fun time!

In addition, there is a shocking deer sequence that will have you laughing and looking away at the same time; I’ll leave it at that. Dennis reappears in probably the most outlandish scene ever witnessed in a film of this ilk. He demands “pancakes,” then does an inexplicable slow mo ninja power flip toward an ailing Burt, mullet flapping in the wind and all. Words can’t do this scene justice! Speaking of Burt, he has a Cro-Magnon line delivery in every scene that is genuinely funny…that ridiculous meat neck jock speak! Marcy’s decision to aimlessly paddle solo across a lake in a canoe is always good for an absurdity laugh! Jeff’s storyline of abandonment, beer and all, and the way he meets his unfortunate fate is rather silly as well. If you enjoy comedy with your horror, this one’s for you!

The Overall Dee-Cision: Watch It!

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