Today's Review: Cabin Fever (Opens Sept 12)
Starring: Rider Strong, Jordan Ladd
Written and Directed by: Eli Roth
Rating: 4 (out of 5)
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The Naked Critic
What is it about cabins deep in the woods that
scare the living crap out of people? This is honestly one aspect of movies that
I've never been able to fathom. People will spend weeks at their cottages,
roughing it in the middle of nowhere, and go on and on AND ON about how
wonderful it is. Then they'll plunk down their hard-earned cash to see other
people terrorized in these same cottages and cabins and go on and on about how
scary they are. Sheesh.
Perhaps it's my own personal bias. After all, I can think of nothing I'd like
less than to spend days on end, cut off from society, with no electricity or
means of entertainment that doesn't involve mouldy old board games that were
purchased at a garage sale for a quarter in 1984, and doing my
"business" into a hole in the ground while serving up my ass as a
smorgasbord to all manner of blood-sucking insects. Give me my flush toilets,
digital cable, and Internet porn any day, thank you very much.
In fact, I've always loved watching these dopes in horror movies getting hacked
by homicidal half-wits during their attempt to "get away from it
all." I usually wind up yelling at them "Ha! How do you like that,
pal? Is that 'a relaxing break from the city' enough for you? HUH?" At
this point I'm usually asked to leave the theatre with my flask of Crown Royal
confiscated.
But this isn't about me...it's about Cabin Fever.
The movie starts with your standard group of young kids who have rented one of
these cabins for the week. They're fortunate enough that they go to the only
college in America that actually lets out for the summer in October, judging by
the number of dead, multicolored leaves on display. The principals in this
piece are Paul (Rider Strong...which, by the way, would be an AWESOME porno
name), who is secretly in love with Karen (Jordan Ladd). Then there's Jeff
(Joey Kern) and Marcy (played by the breasts of Cerina Vincent), the two horny
kids who can't go more than 2 minutes without groping each other, and Bert
(James DeBello), the requisite lunk-headed jock.
At this point, I feel it necessary to mention that Rider Strong is - apparently
- the same Rider Strong from "Boy Meets World" infamy. And, oddly
enough, if a Porn actor WAS named Rider Strong, I can totally see him making a
movie called "Boy Meets World" or, at the very least,
"Bi-Curious Boy Does The World." But don't get your hopes up...at no
point during this movie do we get to see his "Boy Meets World"
co-star Ben Savage being ravaged by a flesh-eating virus. We'll have to hope
that there's a sequel for that to happen...I know MY fingers are crossed.
While stopping for supplies in "town", Paul sits on a bench-swing
next to a kid named Dennis, who promptly bites him on the hand. To be perfectly
fair, I don't think it's Dennis' fault that he lashes out that way. After all,
the kid sports the world's worst mullet. It's bad. Joe Dirt bad. Jeff Foxworthy
bad. If my parents had forced a bad mullet on me as a kid, I'd be tempted to
dine on a few total strangers myself. What were his parents thinking? I mean,
sure, I had a mullet, but in my defence it was 1990, I was REALLY into Guns 'N'
Roses, and it was my own alcohol-and-weed induced choice.
After perusing the store's stock of useless crap, including fox urine, our
fun-loving teens hit the cabin, where Jeff and Marcy wait all of about 13
nanoseconds before banging like a football player and a cheerleader at a
kegger. Paul and Karen decide to go swimming in the lake, so that he can gawk
at her in a bikini. Bert, on the other hand, has his own agenda. He's brought a
gun and - with the obvious lack of sexual partners - decides to take his
frustration out on the local wildlife. This may seem gratuitous and nasty, but
I've also seen the near-homicidal glint in my girlfriend's eyes when squirrels
attack her tomato plants, so I can sort of understand.
While he's off angering PETA, and guaranteeing himself a spot as Bush's new
appointment as the head of the EPA, Bert encounters a hermit who seems to be
infected with some particularly nasty flesh-eating virus. He responds in the
same way as any other civic-minded college student would, and ignores him,
forgetting about him in about 3 seconds.
Meanwhile, back at the cabin, Jeff is treated to "The Shocker." If
you don't know what "The Shocker" is, I'm certainly not going to tell
you. The rest of you guys can either wince or grin.
So later on that night, as our gang is sitting around the cabin being
college-studenty, there's a knock at the door. Sure enough, it's Mr. Hermit,
whose skin at this point is starting to look like pizza with extra, extra,
EXTRA pepperoni. This is where we learn that our heroes, much like thousands of
ill-fated horror-movie characters before them, just aren't that bright. In
fact, they're about as sharp as a sack of wet oatmeal. Thick as a whale
omelette. Dumber than the entire first 2 seasons of "According To
Jim". Case in point, the hermit, upon realizing that there are no Florence
Nightengales in this particular cabin, decides to get in their truck to go and
find out. This is a move which, when you're suffering from a bizarre
flesh-eating disease, seems perfectly reasonable. The kids therefore take the
perfectly reasonable steps of beating the ever-loving shit out of the truck.
Then they set him on fire, which will no doubt lead to many "Then there
was this burning sensation" jokes in the afterlife, but in the meantime
sends him running into the woods whilst on fire, causing Smokey The Bear to
throw up his hands in frustration and mutter "Fine, fuck you guys. Burn
the entire forest down for all I care. Assholes."
At this point, I really, REALLY wanted one of the kids to turn around and say
"Hey, YOU wanted to go to Burning Man this year, so there you go."
I'll forgive Eli Roth for not penning these particular bon mots, but I'm
telling you, I'm our generation's Dorothy Parker, with twice the alcohol
consumption and half the breasts. Naturally, with his last remaining ounces of
life, the hermit heads to the water to try and put out the flames, although
given the choice between burning up quickly and letting a bizarre, flesh eating
virus consume me slowly, I'll take the burnt-marshmallow look any day. But,
I'll forgive the hermit for his error in judgement...after all; he's had one
hell of a bad day. The problem is, the water he heads for is close to the
reservoir that serves the surrounding area, which effectively means that anyone
who drinks the water in the foreseeable future will be infected with the virus.
Chaos, naturally, ensues. One by one, the dopey college students begin to
contract the virus, leading to hi-larious consequences that would put the plot
of your average episode of "Boy Meets World" to shame.
It sounds like I didn't really care for this movie, but the truth is I enjoyed
it immensely. The reason for my sarcastic tone is that, well, that's what you
guys expect from me. If you wanted ass-kissing reviews, you'd be reading Rex
Reed right now.
Eli Roth, the writer/director/co-star of the picture, has actually assembled a
pretty good film. It's very gory, so if you think you'd object to visual images
of young, attractive people being ravaged by a flesh-eating virus, you might
want to go catch the late-show of Seabiscuit instead, which is almost gore-free
right up until the closing glue-factory scene, or so I'm told.
The best thing Cabin Fever has going for it is the script. It's smartly written
and very, VERY funny. I was completely blindsided by the amount of humour in
this film, but I was laughing as often as I was grossed out. Of course, a lot
of the chuckles come from nervous laughter. In particular, there's one scene
where one of the female characters is shaving her legs in the bath. We know
this character has been infected, and on top of it she's sitting in BATH WATER,
so something, SOMETHING is going to happen. Roth drags this moment out as much
as he can, the result of which was a theater-full of squirming, nervous
viewers, many of whom were wincing long before there was anything wince-worthy
on screen. This is the writing and directing of a man who truly LOVES horror
movies, and wants to make his audience suffer as much as possible. I'm telling
you, bad taste is almost NEVER this much fun.
The characters as well are well written and entertaining, for the most part.
One criticism many people have of the genre is the fact that the characters are
often unsympathetic and underdeveloped, but that really doesn't happen here, at
least with the college kids. They're very believable and fun, and in one case,
frequently naked. On the other hand, for the most part, the supporting
characters are taken almost directly from the Big Book of Movie Stereotypes.
Some of the locals are so blatantly rednecky that they make the sodomy-loving
Hee-Haw extras in "Deliverance" look like Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern by comparison, but that's forgivable in the grand scheme of things
(unless, of course, you're a sodomy-loving hillbilly, in which case you'll be
offended. At which point I would point out that you're a sodomy-loving
hillbilly and ripe for ridicule). One supporting player, Giuseppe Andrews as a
clueless deputy, is actually so funny that toward the end of the movie, just
the sight of him on screen was enough to elicit peals of laughter from the
audience.
One odd thing; the script does a lot of, as Ben Affleck's character in
"Chasing Amy" referred to it, "Passive-aggressive
gay-bashing." The movie doesn't seem to go more than 10 minutes without
one of our heroes saying something - or someone - is "gay". I don't
know why Roth made this particular choice. Regardless, look for GLAAD to
complain about this in the near-future. On the other end of the political
spectrum, there's a LOT of swearing in this movie. We're talking a "South
Park" level of profanity, so look for conservative knobs who always
complain about sex and language in movies - but never acts of violence - to
have a field day with it as well. Could this be the movie that unites the
uber-left with the uber-right? Probably not, but see it just to piss them off.
Roth is clearly a lover of horror-films that don't take themselves too
seriously. Although not as silly as other comedy-horrors like the "Evil
Dead" series, it's still funny and scary enough to make it a highly
recommended night of fun. The only thing missing is seeing Ben Savage consumed
by the virus, but I'm hoping this is corrected in the sequel.
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