Bohemian Cinema By Jonathan Pacheco

“Cabin Fever” (2003)

Directed by Eli Roth

Satisfaction:Disappointed Tags: Eli Roth, Horror, Gore

Many horror geeks rejoiced in 2003 when a young one named Eli Roth made a movie called Cabin Fever—a film about a flesh-eating virus in a small forest town. The film promised plenty of blood, plenty of humor, and plenty of homages.

The only reason I know that Cabin Fever has many homages to older horror films is because I read so; I didn’t catch any, which is not surprising, considering my lack of knowledge in the genre. But I didn’t feel that they were there. It sounds silly, I know, but in films like The Descent, I can sense that air of history and influence, even if I don’t know what I’m witnessing. Not so with Fever. I won’t hold this against Roth because it’s nitpicky and unimportant, but it is something that I noticed.

Back on topic, Cabin Fever attempts to make use of certain film and horror cliches—you know, standard devices like the cabin in the woods, the hormone driven teenagers, a strange surfer, and the obligatory sex scene. Some people will then tell you that this makes the film smart and funny. I would disagree. Let me quote Roger Ebert in his review of Mars Attacks!:

Burton has made a common mistake: He assumes it is funny simply to *be doing* a parody, when in fact the material has to be funny in its own right.

While I wouldn’t call Cabin Fever a parody, I would say that part of its shtick is to mock elements that made old gore films goofy and exuberant. But it’s not enough to drop it into your film; you have to take it to the next level. As with Hostel, Cabin Fever wants to harken back to B-Movies (and some A ones) with its style and substance, but it never takes it far enough. Events and characters are not extreme enough to qualify as camp, but not good enough to qualify as an improvement on the genre, or even a decent homage. Again, Ebert on Mars Attacks!:

A movie like this should be a lot better, or a lot worse. Mars Attacks! plays like one of those ’50s movies that are *not* remembered as cult classics.

And that’s just the problem with Cabin Fever, just as it was with Hostel: it plays like the films Roth grew up idolizing, but it plays like the forgettable ones. What is it about Cabin Fever that makes it “smarter” than other horror films? Just because it’s self-aware (or supposedly self-aware)? The thing that made a film like Scream clever was not only that it was self-aware, but that it used this appreciation to its advantage by sometimes honoring cliches and rules and other times breaking them—all on purpose.

Cabin Fever is filled with a few odd, useless incidents, and the vibe that I get from them is that they’re intentionally pointless. Our protagonist, Paul (Rider Strong), spends the first third of the film desperately pining after Karen (Jordan Ladd), only to have the entire subplot thrown out the window. Is this bad storytelling or one of the film’s “good homages” to bad storytelling? I’m not quite sure, but there’s another moment that has to be on purpose. The virus is infecting plenty of people, and Paul runs out in the darkness in search of help when he comes across a house. He looks in the window and sees a nude woman waiting in bed. He gawks until the woman’s lover spots Paul outside, yelling at him until he bolts. What did this have to do with anything else in the film? Nothing, as far as I can remember, and that makes it kind of funny.

I’m doubtless, though, that a particular scene had the effect that it was intended to have. A female character, infected with the virus, decides she wants to take a bath and shave her legs (perhaps to feel “normal” again; you know how women are). I must say, shaving legs plus a flesh-eating virus equals much cringing.

Yet, almost in a rush to finish, the film gets pretty sloppy with its ending—an ending full of predictable outcomes, making it uninteresting. A punchline of sorts shows up for the finale and it adds a little bit to the film. The funny thing is that only in that last scene does the film take a turn towards camp, as if Roth was too chicken to make the entire film that way, only letting it slip it in at the end because it’s less risky.

Too little too late, Eli.