I have finally found an outbreak/outsiders in danger when they enter an insular community movie that I’m not into! The original Eli Roth’s Cabin Fever did not appeal to me at all. It is about a group of students who get a cabin in the woods when they encounter a sick stranger and out of fear of contamination, kill him then face a similar fate when the locals realize their predicament.
Cabin Fever is Deliverance meets every Eli Roth movie when teenagers travel to party then forced by external circumstances out of their control, try and survive the homicidal intentions of the locals. Does Roth suffer from hodophobia? I hated a couple of things about this film. Even though the initial contamination appears to be when a man touches a dead animal, and the men are exposed to copious amounts of blood, Roth seems to have a prurient fascination with women and their constant proximity to blood whether through menstruation or shaving. There is definitely a vagina dentata preoccupation or eurotophobia because in contrast, the men’s outbreak symptoms are never lingered upon in a similar fashion.
Cabin Fever sets up a joke grenade early in the film that explodes at the end. Whether or not you find it humorous depends on your feeling about the usage of a particular racial epithet by certain groups. The joke hinges on the audience believing stereotypes about the locals, which superficially seem to be confirmed based on the locals’ reaction to the teens before they are aware of the outbreak. While the teens’ initial hostile reaction to the contagion seemed counterintuitive, Roth’s locals consciously respond similarly, and this movie is fairly popular so I’m the only jerk that doesn’t think, “Kill” when I see an infected person. Maybe Roth did not give the scenario a lot of thought, but I’m supposed to believe that the locals are really awesome, friendly people to everyone, including black people, and their reaction to the teens was uncharacteristic or the teens were so awful, which they were, that the locals’ hostility is a reasonable response. The joke does not work for me though I was desperate to find something clever about the movie that even though I saw the joke on the horizon, I tried to make it work, but it does not given the context of the entire movie, and no, y’all don’t get to use that word.
If awfulness didn’t matter, then Bert was probably the best character in Cabin Fever. His response time to threats was instantaneous, and if survival depended on that factor, he should have lived. I know that I’m supposed to be rooting for Paul, but he annoyed me, and I’m glad that he got infected. He keeps jumping into infections like a dumbass and deserved to die. I was indifferent to the others, but what happened to the biting kid? I appreciated the bleak ending. Would someone be dumb enough to intentionally dump a body there? Probably.
I started with the last in the franchise, Cabin Fever: Patient Zero, then started with the first. Will I stay true to my completist ways and watch Cabin Fever 2: Spring Fever even though these movies clearly aren’t for me? Stay tuned!