Cabin Fever

Rating: R

Run Time: 93 minutes

Director: Eli Roth

Starring: Jordan Ladd, Rider Strong, James DeBello

“You just want to grab the person next to you and fuck the shit out of them.”

I really wish Eli Roth were the person next to me at this moment.  I don’t want to fuck him; I want to beat the living shit out of him…

I have subjected myself to a string of shitty movies lately.  Cabin Fever is just one more flick that continues the trend and perfectly epitomizes this particular dry spell of mine ten-fold.  The movie is nonsensical.  The dialogue is atrocious.  The expendable meat is even more contemptible than usual.  The film is rambling and desultory, devoid of much of a plot. There is no forward momentum to the story.  There is nothing at all logical about the entire experience.  Even the reasoning of the group of vile young adults who are the focus of the flick is, if at all possible, even more idiotic than is generally the norm in this sort of shit-fest.

If you are a Roth fan, please explain to me the attraction.  This was supposed to be his good movie, right?  I will never watch Hostel now. 

I’m not averse to watching disturbing movies, outre gore movies, exploitation movies, movies depicting torture, or any combination thereof, if there is a need for the thing.  I understand that the enjoyment or vilification of some aspect of a film that deliberately tries to shock or even alienate the viewer is entirely a matter of subjectivity for each of us.  My tolerance of this kind of show extends to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Hills Have Eyes, House of a 1000 Corpses and its sequel, Hatchets I, II, & III, Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, or Taxi Driver.  My God, man, I liked Saw well enough and actually find merit and message in Cannibal Holocaust.  But Cabin Fever is just fuck-awful, derivative and unoriginal without possessing value as an homage to one of those other films, it is filled with character after character whose deaths do not elicit audience empathy, and it’s just plain stupid.           

Cabin Fever is not half bad, it is wholly, unashamedly, irredeemably, unabashedly all the way bad.  I should have known a movie whose lead was the co-star of one of my most reviled 90s sitcoms wasn’t likely to satisfy me on any level whatsoever.  But I had no idea a horror movie could plunge to the depths this one plumbs and still earn a theatrical release. Or be reviewed well. 

Some have suggested it be viewed as a black comedy or parody (of what, I have no idea).  The problem with this theory is that the filmmakers play it straight throughout at least the first half of the movie, until they are far too committed to a vision of the film as a legitimate horror outing.  Then, mid-way through, they try to get ironic on us.  It’s too late, mo-fos.

Here’s where we begin: a hobo-looking fellow returns to his campsite with what looks like some roadkill for dinner, only to find his dog dead and the bloody carcass open from neck to groin.  The dog is so obviously dead from even the most cursory glance that the incredulity of the homeless guy looks a little ridiculous.  Really, the dog is not so much obviously dead as obviously the most fake-ass prop, but let’s, for the sake of fairness, try to suspend our disbelief.  If the homeless guy can do it, so can we.

Next up, we see five kids heading for a weekend of fun at somebody’s cabin in the woods (sorry, but that’s what it is).  The gang are the most sorry excuses for humanity I have seen since, well, All the Boys Love Mandy Lane, another recent shitter that has been reviewed well.  I’m not even going to make the effort to identify these characters with names or the names of the actors who play them because the characters are all cut from the same vain, self-absorbed, cloth.  Here is my exception: one of these assholes is played by Rider Strong (“Boy Meets World”).  Not only is he as much of a dick as the other two male co-leads, but, being Rider Strong, he is a terrible actor playing a dick.  Somehow, some way, the combination of talentless douche and insufferable character made the viewing experience infinitely more painful for me.

Now we swing back to the old man.  He’s been infected with something.  Did he get this from the dog?  Fuck if I know, because I didn’t know the dog had an infection.  While we’re on the subject of the dog, however, I will say this: he has better presence and acting chops than the entire cast of this debacle…and he’s a fake-ass prop.   Now to the where the old man meets the assholes.  One of them happens onto the homeless, woods-dwelling unfortunate and refuses to help the poor guy when he asks for and so desperately needs it.  Flat out refuses.  You wouldn’t think that even complete douches would tempt the wrath of God, the fates, karma, or whatever you happen to believe, quite so blatantly as this jackass does.  The poor homeless bastard returns to their cabin in the evening, still seeking help, and the stupid fuckers end up accidentally setting him on fire.

This does nothing to save them from what’s coming, however, and the rest of the movie deals with their efforts to save their own sorry asses at each other’s expense.  Have we become so cynical that we must populate a cast with young characters and then demonstrate that every single one of them is entirely devoid of even the most rudimentary sense of moral responsibility or compassion for others, even among themselves?  Have we become this inured to a pointlessly nihilist approach to movie-making that this is what we get for characters?  What is Roth trying to say?  I cannot tell, but it adds nothing of value to the very real societal problem I, in my dotage, am beginning to see:  our alienation from one another and our increasingly antisocial behavior threatens to destroy us.  The behavior here is on display for no other reason than to show people who fuck each other over to survive, yet end up dying anyway.  Maybe it’s a Sophoclean metaphor used to decipher the tragedy of the Millenials, the tragic flaw being woven into the tapestry of this generation being that you can be as shitty, cynical, narcissistic, and vain as you care to be…but you’re still gonna end up dead, fuckers.         

Is this what Eli Roth believes?  Perhaps so, given that he followed this with Hostel.  But in this film there is no dramatic import to how these young adults turn on one another.  Because they are all assholes to begin, when the virus infiltrates the group, they really just become even bigger assholes.  Lost is the resonance of the key theme of Deliverance, Straw Dogs, or The Hills Have Eyes, that we are capable of descending into the worst kind of savagery and will use extreme violence, fighting fire with fire and claiming an eye for an eye, to protect our own interests and to survive.

Here’s another thing, while I’m on it:  some horror works well when there is no explanation for the bad thing (what it is, where it came from, etc.), whether it be monster, ghost, deadly virus, you name it.  This movie, however, cannot bear to be inexplicable; it chokes on the lack of an origin story for the flesh-eating (I guess, who really knows) bacteria or whatever it is.  The lack of exposition regarding the infectious agent leaves a big, gaping hole in a plot that cannot afford one, because the story that unfolds behind it is simply not strong enough. ***

Because of this, Cabin Fever is a long, verrrry long, string of scenes of no intrinsic significance that do nothing to develop narrative continuity; it’s just one unimportant thing after another.  This is not helped by the main actors, who suck as much as actors as their characters do as morally bankrupt tits.  If Roth were aiming for a black comedy (I’m not convinced), the performances need to be tongue in cheek or a little mannered; this cast is not up to that. 

Anyway, as I said, once everyone starts getting whatever the fuck it is they’re getting, they start acting even more cravenly and, incredibly, even more obnoxiously than before.  As they do, the movie descends further into irrelevance. 

Shall we try to salvage something out of this experience?  Let's use Cabin Fever as a model for how not to make a horror movie of this sort.  Here we go!

1. Populate your movie with despicable characters whose deaths the audience will not only not mourn, but will instead actively root for with every fiber of their being.
2. Create an undefined menace that has no antecedent to explain what the hell it is,where it came from, and just exactly what it does.
3. Write shittty dialogue (so bad it has three tees) that is littered with profanity, to demonstrate how bereft your imagination truly is.
4. Arrange your scenes by no logic discernible to anyone with a fucking brain so there is no inter connectivity between one asinine idea and the next and the movie just stumbles ever onward inexorably toward an ending that will release the viewer from his pain and incredulity.
5. As either a consequence or the driving force behind #4 (I’m just not sure), just don’t worry about anything so bourgeois as a plot and, whatever you do, don’t let it get in the way of your vision of further corrupting any-bloody-someone so unfortunate as to stumble in to the theater to see the morass of doo-doo you’ve created.
6.  Do make a late act effort to shift gears entirely into what could kindly be called black comedy, if it were only the least bit fucking funny.  Still, however, continue to litter in scenes that can only be taken seriously in order to confuse further those of us who form your audience.
7. Be sure to have about six endings too many.  Make sure they go on and on.     

  

I have heard it said Cabin Fever is a parable for the AIDS or SARS crisis.  That is almost unthinkable, because if it were, it would be an absolutely tasteless insult to anyone with HIV.  I’ve heard it’s a parody…of what, Ebola virus?  Does that seem like a good idea? 

Let me end with a few of the things that are never explained, because, hey, I cannot stop myself at this point without hitting on every single thing I can remember that made my viewing experience so very, very unpleasant:

• Why does that fucking retard kid Dennis bite?  And why does he scream ”pancakes” and then do a little ju-jitsu before moving in for the kill?
• Who is the guy with the dog who shows up with the weed?  That whole scene is nonsensical.  (Yes, I know it’s Eli Roth, but what does he have to do with anything?) 
• Winston…really?
• The storekeeper and the racist comment is explained in a way that is, if anything, even more racist in its irreverence…why would a person do that?

Senseless cruelty, extreme gore, sex, profanity, all have their place in the right kind of story.  But don’t they have to earn it?…even a little bit?  What is the upside to creating a fictional world peopled with vile, selfish, amoral characters?  Because if the point is to show how we crumble and fall and turn into quivering mounds of jelly when forced to act in extremis, why broadcast that inevitability by giving us people who would, judging by what we see of them even before the shit hits the fan, only ever do exactly that anyway?

   

To end: the movie is depressing.  Is it depressing because the subject matter is uncompromisingly hard-hitting?  No.  It’s because I looked back at the end of it all and realized I had wasted an hour and a half of my life that I will never ever see again.  The one thing I can say in its defense is that Cabin Fever is an effective explanatory model for Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity, because I would swear that hour and a half was twice as long.

The Horror Inkwell Rating: 3/10