Cabin Fever
By Aine

You know what? Cabin Fever wasn’t nearly as awful as everyone made it out to be. What it lacked in originality it more than made up for in quirkiness. Sure you’ve got a bunch of perfectly stereotypical college kids going to a cabin in the woods for a wild weekend, but what do you expect from a horror movie? This time there’s no masked killer lurking in the shadows waiting to slaughter them as soon as they get naked. No, that would be too easy. The baddie in this flick is a nasty, flesh-eating virus; but I’m getting ahead of myself.

I don’t need to go into who’s in love with whom and who’s fucking when, that’s all just filler anyway, until the killing starts. So our kiddies arrive in the small town and are greeted by the not-so-friendly locals. A little boy is sitting outside on a swing when stupid teen number one decides to join him. Of course, the kid, whose name is Dennis, is crazy and proceeds to bite the aforementioned stupid teen. That in and of itself was hilarious enough, but since I saw this in a theatre I got to hear a confused child yell out, “I thought that was a little girl!”

Afterwards, they have some more fun with the locals, such as stupid jock teen asking an old man what the gun is for, and the old man replies, “that’s for niggers.” Fortunately, that line is part of a cute joke that you find out about at the end of the film when the gun is actually being sold to a bunch of black kids and then they all get together and sing a song on the porch…I told you this movie was quirky.

Ok, so, stupid jock kid goes into the woods shooting at squirrels and encounters a man who is very sick and bleeding goop everywhere. In fear he shoots the man and runs back to the cabin for more beer, not informing his buddies of his little adventure. Later, the sick man returns and gets blood and more goop all over their car and causes a big ruckus until the kids decide to play human torch and light him up. Somewhere shortly before or after this, I can’t remember which, director Eli Roth decided to put himself in the movie as a pot-smoking idiot with a really mean dog, oh well.

Anyway, I don’t need to go into a lot of detail here, you know the deal, one of the kids gets infected and they lock her ass up in the shed so she can melt and die and not infect them, but of course it’s too late because the virus has gotten into their water. There is one scene in particular where a guy hooks up with a chick, and in an attempt to clean himself, pours Listerine on his crotch, definitely amusing.

Next up we have the super vain chick who is shaving her legs and her flesh starts to melt off but she just keeps on shaving. It makes no sense, but it sure is gory. The whole movie is pretty gory, actually. In the meantime, the pretty boy friend has taken all the beer and hidden in a cave or something. And jock-boy goes on the run seeking help. The first boy hangs around with some loser drunken cop that reminds me of an ugly David Arquette.

Jock-boy finds the store from the beginning of the movie, and for no apparent reason other than it being kind of cool and painfully funny, the little crazy boy yells “Pancakes!” and does some kung fu before running over and biting the jock, thus infecting the boy with the virus. So the locals go hunting the teens Deliverance style and the jock does the noble thing, taking a bullet for his buddy’s chance at escape.

So all is silent and the pretty boy pops out, alive and well. He returns to the cabin and begins to yell, “I survived!” Then the cops come and shoot his ass, just like Night of the Living Dead. You gotta love Eli Roth for things like that, really.

Ah yes, now the end, the first boy is lying dead in the town’s water supply and a bottled water truck drives out of town, very clever. I thought it had lots of funny movies, I liked the references to classic horror movies, and I am actually looking forward to seeing more from Eli Roth. Word has it that Roth has formed an independent horror production company with Scott Spiegel called Raw Nerve, go Eli.