Simply Perfect

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

If you dub yourself a "horror fan" then you have to see this one.Granted the Director's Cut makes things run smoother than the Theatrical Cut, the film is still solid. From the characters to the plot, everything works. Joey Kern as Jeff kills it. Giuseppe Andrews as Deputy Winston? Kills it. James DeBello as Burt is great as well, acting in a similar way to his role in "Detroit Rock City". Rider Strong as Paul is probably the weakest out of the actors for me but I can still get behind his performance. Cerina Vincent as Marcy is great and sexy. Jordan Ladd as Karen is the only other weak point I can see. Even the rednecks from the store work.Everything is how it should be and it's hard for me to try and see anything wrong with it. I just wish it were longer.The score is amazing and I'm not sure if anyone else noticed where some of them originated from. "Last House on the Left", anyone? Yes, some of the scores are from that 1972 film directed by Wes Craven. Those particular scores are by David A. Hess who stars in "Last House on the Left". It fits perfectly and just adds to the greatness and eeriness of this film. The other sounds and scores throughout the film are great, creepy and just make the movie flow so well.The vibe, the shots and the scenery in this film are excellent. Cabin Fever is certainly better than a lot of the people on here have made it out to be. Eli Roth definitely knew what he was doing when he set out to make this film and it was effectively shown. Do yourself a favor and watch it and appreciate it for what it is.

I saw the whole movie, and it just shown how nothing happened. Kid bit a man, but that lead nowhere. Girl got her face eaten, but that lead nowhere. Guy who didn't get infected gets shot. Infected guy infects water. Guy who dropped N-bomb is friends with random black people. The black people, by the way, are pretty much just giant stereotypes. Don't worry, they only appear for five seconds just for a joke. In short, people get flesh eating virus, they die. End of story. Everybody go home.

Cabin Fever (2002) ** 1/2 (out of 4) Five friends head out to a cabin in the woods for a week of fun but before long one of them are being eaten alive by a virus, which soon starts to effect the others.Eli Roth's CABIN FEVER is a fairly good movie for the most part but I think it tries to do a bit too much and in the end it remains entertaining but I think had it been more focused then it could have been better. I say this because the film wants to gross you out, make you laugh, tries to be scary and it also tries to wink at itself while also being serious. The film simply goes off into too many directions for it to be a complete success.I say this because the film is certainly never scary because of the wink nature of how everything is handled. With that said, the comedy really doesn't work as well as I'm sure everyone hoped and especially with some of the characters actions. The film and especially the director knows a great deal about the genre so we get little nods to other movies and this here is fun.The performances for the most part are quite good but there's no question that what sets the film apart is its rather gory and extremely goo-filled violence. There are some great effects on display here and I especially loved the scenes where the skin is basically just falling off the bone and this is best seen when one of the characters scratches his hands against a tree. If you're a fan of gore then you'll certainly be happy with the high volume on display here.

During the additional features option on the DVD of Cabin Fever, Eli Roth's (rich) Dad explains that Eli was "destined to make horror movies" because as a child he vomited during the gross-out scene in Ridley Scotts movie "Alien". Play that backwards, symbolically, and you get the impetus for every reason Eli Roth shouldn't make movies.This film is, really, bargain basement trash - almost like a 1987 straight-to-video slasher in so many ways; the young adults look like extras, or amateurs, complete with bland TV-hairstyling (in the remote wilderness, for some reason?), and the foul mouthed and generally unlikeable young adults get in trouble when a hideous disease, sort of a scabby, zombified necrotising fasciitis breaks out and starts turning the characters into gore covered corpses. The solution? There isn't one - the movie has a premise and no plot development whatsoever.Worse still, the film has a "comic relief" character thats supposedly a sleazy, sexist policeman, who IS weird, but ISN'T funny. Numerous scenes are dedicated to the pretty young female cast members appearing semi-naked or having chaste porn sex on screen, usually to be revealed later to be covered in massive, pus filled sores, their skin literally peeling off from a devastating virus.The worst, and I mean, easily the worst thing about this film is its use of "uneasy racial humour"; a local redneck in Cabin Fever refers to some black kids as "niggers", which the city folk take as shockingly intolerable, but later on, its all, like "hey, my niggaz, wassup??" as if, supposedly, the redneck kook that fixes rifles at a small rural community store is so in with local black community that he affectionately calls them "niggers". In all honesty, a lot of viewers won't get to the end of the movie, so they won't see this quick turn around into a type of black comedy that betrays Eli Roth's inept sense of humour and poor taste as a filmmaker.Lastly, there is a bizarre, slow motion kung-fu segment featuring a disturbed hillbilly kid that feels, perhaps unintentionally, like a homage to Claudio Fragasso's Troll 2.Cabin Fever is utter crap, as I stated above, but ultimately, its very cheap filmmaking, meaning that its nominal profit margin will allow for sequels, same as the garbage 80s slasher movies that Eli Roth is "paying tribute" to. Essentially, this is a cheap 80s-style slasher without an actual bad guy in sight.