Cabin Fever

Filmmaker and sometime actor and assistant to David Lynch Eli Roth makes no bones about his influences. He admits to wanting to make a "throwback" to the likes of The Evil Dead and The Thing - films from a time when horror meant genuinely horrifying and scary, and not ironic and self-referential. He's failed on most of those fronts - Cabin Fever is only vaguely horrifying and displays the sort of tongue-in-cheek self-consciousness he was professing to avoid. But it's still a moderately entertaining film that has its moments and is riddled with interesting, dubious subtexts.

So, you've got five college friends: Paul (Rider Strong), a nice boy who dotes on old friend Karen (Jordan Ladd); Jeff (Joey Kern), a pretty boy who's half of a shag-happy couple with the shapely Marcy (Cerina Vincent); and Bert (James DeBello), a boozy oaf. They head out into the country, by way of a store populated by sub-Deliverance types, including a weird kid who likes to bite ("Everybody knows not to sit next to Dennis," intones his hick dad) and his store-keeper grandpappy (Robert Harris), who jokes that his gun is "for niggers".

Going off-road, they enter a scraggy woodland reminiscent of The Blair Witch Project and soon pitch up at their holiday destination, a cabin borrowed from the set of The Evil Dead. While Paul tries to cop off with Karen, and Jeff and Marcy go at it, Bert is drunkenly wandering around shooting at things - including a very sick looking hermit (Arie Verveen). In no time at all, the hermit has arrived at the cabin and puked blood all over the kids' van. In trying to scare him off, they accidentally set fire to him. And lo and behold his corpse ends up infecting the water supply for the cabin (but they don't know that). While they bicker and yell, the kids one by one succumb to the mysterious bug - firstly Karen ("I feel nauseous"), who they shove in an outbuilding!

This treatment of Karen is the first of the film's many problems. Despite their van being knackered, the cabin really isn't that isolated - a stoner camper (the director in a gratuitous ego-cameo) wanders by one night, while a farm and a house are both within walking distance. Even the town doesn't seem that far away. But rather than actually go for help, they insist on squabbling, with Jeff running off on his own, Bert trying to fix the car and Marcy eventually jumping Paul's bones. Oh, and the local rednecks turn up with guns too.

Roth's film is a bit of a mix. There's humour throughout, but it lacks the hilarity of the horror slapstick of Rami or Peter Jackson's early films (until the final 20 minutes - which are very amusing, and even include the memorable sight of a guy with his harmonica stuck in his throat). The horror oscillates between that arising from a sense of isolation and sheer body horror. The treatment of the former simply lacks the paranoia and abject fear that fuelled Blair Witch or Night Of The Living Dead (another reference point). The latter, meanwhile, mostly focuses on the women - making an excuse for shots of Marcy in the bath (Vincent seems to have a tits-out contract, but not Ladd - very much like in Very Bad Things). But then, streaks of exploitation and PC-challenging brashness run through the film. Roth again admits to Lenny Bruce being among his cultural heroes, so the abovementioned "nigger" comment has a preposterous punchline, while throughout the kids use "gay" like a schoolyard insult.

The most interesting element is Roth and co-writer Randy Pearlstein's use of disease as a metaphor for social problems. It's not a new idea (see David Cronenberg's Rabid, George A Romero's The Crazies), but the way in which the unity of the group breaks down and each character comes out with greater or lesser degrees of selfishness is effective. Bert and Jeff are the most callous, but have a point with their survival instincts, while Paul insists "We have to talk to each other. We have to work together" and Marcy emerges as the most level-headed (for a while), despite being the film's sex-pot. Compared to most of the horror genre, the characterisation is strong (despite some awful scripting). It gives the film a confidence and appeal that partially makes up for it not actually achieving its stated aim of recapturing the thrill of Friday The 13th, Evil Dead and The Thing. But then, you can't contrive to capture the essence of a classic, however much you pillage the elements.