Member-only story
Cabin Fever (2002) ~ Film Review
I vaguely remember seeing Cabin Fever in theaters ten years ago and I know I hated it. Because of this, I was hesitant to watch it again. It seems like less and less that I am surprised in the land of horror, but today I was. I enjoyed this film much more than the first time I saw it and was able to recognize it for what it was — a pretty great film about something truly disturbing. Directed, produced, and written by Eli Roth, this film was the highest-grossing horror film of 2002 and probably the goriest too. Roth is known for his love of gore and I remember that’s why I hated the film many years ago. I don’t mind gore, though, when used with a truly great horror story and this film achieves that.
Cabin Fever is a somewhat predictable story about a group of five college kids who rent a cabin in the woods for a jolly good time of sex, drugs, and drinking. While vacationing, a creepy hermit with an obvious infection winds up floating in the reservoir of drinking water. As you can imagine, this doesn’t exactly purify the water and through a series of events, the kids begin to contract the flesh-eating virus with both terrifying and disgusting results. Don’t mistake the story and characters as the same old, same old, though. Roth skillfully combines a fresh horror — a flesh-eating virus — with horror staples like a cabin in the woods, a group of horny kids, morally questionable decisions, and a ton of blood and…
