Cabin Fever

Eli Roth’s debut, Cabin Fever follows five friends (Rider Strong’s Paul, Jordan Ladd’s Karen, James DeBello’s Bert, Cerina Vincent’s Marcy, and Joey Kern’s Jeff) as they arrive at a remote cabin in the woods for a weekend of relaxing and partying – with the trip taking a bloody turn after a flesh-eating virus begins working its way through the characters. There’s almost excessively little within Cabin Fever that won’t seem all-too-familiar to horror fans, as scripters Roth and Randy Pearlstein have infused the narrative with just about every convention and cliche of the genre imaginable – and yet it’s clear that the movie, in its early stages, fares much better than one might’ve anticipated. Roth does an effective job of initially luring the viewer into the well-worn proceedings, with the solid visuals and affable performances going a long way towards perpetuating the film’s watchable vibe. It’s only as the aforementioned virus becomes more and more prominent that Cabin Fever begins to peter out, as the movie’s second half is rife with fairly tedious sequences involving the characters’ growing mistrust of one another. Roth’s efforts at filling screentime pave the way for too many instances of palpable filler, including, especially, an ongoing subplot concerning the exploits of an inexplicably goofy police officer named Deputy Winston (Giuseppe Andrews). The copious gore that ultimately fills the movie’s third act isn’t enough to compensate for a progressively tiresome atmosphere, and it’s clear, too, that the somewhat anticlimactic finale ensures that Cabin Fever ends on a woefully forgettable note.

** out of ****