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#647 - Cabin Fever
Eli Roth, 2002
Five college-aged friends plan to spend a week on holiday at a remote cabin in the woods only to have their trip ruined by a run-in with a flesh-eating virus.
Maybe it's because I haven't been all that invested in modern horror in general, but I have somehow managed to avoid watching any movies that have been directed by Eli Roth (provided you don't count Thanksgiving, his brief mock-trailer contribution to Grindhouse). I figured that I'd focus on his break-through feature Cabin Fever because its premise at least had the potential to prove more interesting than seeing people get flat-out tortured as they did in his most notorious film, Hostel. As such, it ends up being the kind of film that would naturally be taken down a peg by Drew Goddard's The Cabin in the Woods almost a decade later (despite having its own comical bent, though it's not an effective one). It follows five friends as they plan on taking a week-long vacation to a cabin in the woods, which naturally leads to them encountering some very antagonistic locals. Unfortunately, it turns out that their week away coincides with a backwoods hermit getting infected with some sort of flesh-eating virus, which causes some serious problems when said hermit shows up on the cabin's doorstep desperately begging for help. Things only get worse from there...
I'll grant Cabin Fever at least one concession; at least it introduces an element of unease through the fact that the main enemy here is not an unbelievably supernatural threat so much as a very plausible threat in the form of an unknown virus that just comes out of nowhere, especially when it ends up being spread through the area's water supply. At the very least, I've had at least a couple of moments since watching this film where I've regarded glasses of water with suspicion, which has to count for something. The effects needed to convey the virus's gory effects on people are serviceable (but I expect nothing less from the KNB group), though any shock value the gore causes does start to wear off eventually. Of course, the film still feels that the virus alone is not enough of a threat and has to throw in some dangerous locals in order to provide another threat. Obliviously racist shopkeepers, rabid children, violent neighbours, and difficult law enforcement figures abound, though their presence is a bit of a double-edged sword in that they not only indicate that the virus itself isn't enough of a threat to sustain the film but they also tend to prove distracting at times; the most prominent example is the comic-relief police deputy who seems more interested in chasing cheap thrills than actually doing any police work and the fact that he gets his own jazzy Twin Peaks-style leitmotif (composed by Angelo Badalamenti himself, no less!) comes across as awfully jarring and not in a good way.
I'm not such a big fan of the trend of horror films trying to introduce main characters who are so reprehensible that their gradually being picked off by the film's threat ultimately proves to be cathartic more so than frightening. I'll grant that the logic is sound - since you're definitely going to see the characters in a horror movie suffer, they might as well be bad people that arguably deserve whatever horrible fates befall them. Of course, the flip-side is that making them too irritating can make the non-horror bits difficult to tolerate and thus lower your opinion of the film as a whole. Cabin Fever is pretty unapologetic in its use of such characters that fit into such easily recognisable stereotypes, such as having both female characters fit into the classic molds of both virginal final girl and easy-going obvious victim. The male characters don't fare much better with not one but two characters fitting into the obnoxious alpha-male stereotype (engaging in beer-swilling, pranks, and wildlife-shooting to boot), though I give the film some credit for at least painting its ostensible nice-guy protagonist as being just as subtly pathetic and predatory in his attempts to win over the final girl.
Cabin Fever at least avoids the usual jump-scares for the most part but it doesn't really provide much beyond that. There's a certain degree of inevitability to the virus's infection rate, though it does cause its own plot holes as to how much of the tainted water each main character ends up consuming or being exposed to over the course of the film. The gory nature of the virus's effects once again makes me question whether or not repulsion is an adequate substitute for fear. Horror is a genre that's built on being unpleasant, but I feel like certain types of unpleasant threaten to make the film difficult (if not impossible) to enjoy in any capacity. Aside from that, the film's attempt to provide another variation on the conflict between rural savagery and urban superiority is only marginally effective, whereas attempts to wring some dark humour out of the situation fall flat for the most part and thus become one more reason why I don't feel like I can honestly like the film. I feel like any attempt to praise Cabin Fever ends up coming across as a grudging concession more so than a genuine compliment, and said good qualities are minor enough that I don't feel like they can adequately compensate for the rest of the movie's shortcomings. It's pretty telling that I was originally considering giving this one-and-a-half popcorn boxes but even then I couldn't help but feel like I was somehow overrating it.
Eli Roth, 2002
Five college-aged friends plan to spend a week on holiday at a remote cabin in the woods only to have their trip ruined by a run-in with a flesh-eating virus.
Maybe it's because I haven't been all that invested in modern horror in general, but I have somehow managed to avoid watching any movies that have been directed by Eli Roth (provided you don't count Thanksgiving, his brief mock-trailer contribution to Grindhouse). I figured that I'd focus on his break-through feature Cabin Fever because its premise at least had the potential to prove more interesting than seeing people get flat-out tortured as they did in his most notorious film, Hostel. As such, it ends up being the kind of film that would naturally be taken down a peg by Drew Goddard's The Cabin in the Woods almost a decade later (despite having its own comical bent, though it's not an effective one). It follows five friends as they plan on taking a week-long vacation to a cabin in the woods, which naturally leads to them encountering some very antagonistic locals. Unfortunately, it turns out that their week away coincides with a backwoods hermit getting infected with some sort of flesh-eating virus, which causes some serious problems when said hermit shows up on the cabin's doorstep desperately begging for help. Things only get worse from there...
I'll grant Cabin Fever at least one concession; at least it introduces an element of unease through the fact that the main enemy here is not an unbelievably supernatural threat so much as a very plausible threat in the form of an unknown virus that just comes out of nowhere, especially when it ends up being spread through the area's water supply. At the very least, I've had at least a couple of moments since watching this film where I've regarded glasses of water with suspicion, which has to count for something. The effects needed to convey the virus's gory effects on people are serviceable (but I expect nothing less from the KNB group), though any shock value the gore causes does start to wear off eventually. Of course, the film still feels that the virus alone is not enough of a threat and has to throw in some dangerous locals in order to provide another threat. Obliviously racist shopkeepers, rabid children, violent neighbours, and difficult law enforcement figures abound, though their presence is a bit of a double-edged sword in that they not only indicate that the virus itself isn't enough of a threat to sustain the film but they also tend to prove distracting at times; the most prominent example is the comic-relief police deputy who seems more interested in chasing cheap thrills than actually doing any police work and the fact that he gets his own jazzy Twin Peaks-style leitmotif (composed by Angelo Badalamenti himself, no less!) comes across as awfully jarring and not in a good way.
I'm not such a big fan of the trend of horror films trying to introduce main characters who are so reprehensible that their gradually being picked off by the film's threat ultimately proves to be cathartic more so than frightening. I'll grant that the logic is sound - since you're definitely going to see the characters in a horror movie suffer, they might as well be bad people that arguably deserve whatever horrible fates befall them. Of course, the flip-side is that making them too irritating can make the non-horror bits difficult to tolerate and thus lower your opinion of the film as a whole. Cabin Fever is pretty unapologetic in its use of such characters that fit into such easily recognisable stereotypes, such as having both female characters fit into the classic molds of both virginal final girl and easy-going obvious victim. The male characters don't fare much better with not one but two characters fitting into the obnoxious alpha-male stereotype (engaging in beer-swilling, pranks, and wildlife-shooting to boot), though I give the film some credit for at least painting its ostensible nice-guy protagonist as being just as subtly pathetic and predatory in his attempts to win over the final girl.
Cabin Fever at least avoids the usual jump-scares for the most part but it doesn't really provide much beyond that. There's a certain degree of inevitability to the virus's infection rate, though it does cause its own plot holes as to how much of the tainted water each main character ends up consuming or being exposed to over the course of the film. The gory nature of the virus's effects once again makes me question whether or not repulsion is an adequate substitute for fear. Horror is a genre that's built on being unpleasant, but I feel like certain types of unpleasant threaten to make the film difficult (if not impossible) to enjoy in any capacity. Aside from that, the film's attempt to provide another variation on the conflict between rural savagery and urban superiority is only marginally effective, whereas attempts to wring some dark humour out of the situation fall flat for the most part and thus become one more reason why I don't feel like I can honestly like the film. I feel like any attempt to praise Cabin Fever ends up coming across as a grudging concession more so than a genuine compliment, and said good qualities are minor enough that I don't feel like they can adequately compensate for the rest of the movie's shortcomings. It's pretty telling that I was originally considering giving this one-and-a-half popcorn boxes but even then I couldn't help but feel like I was somehow overrating it.