CABIN FEVER

6/10

USA 2002 (released 2003) : Eli ROTH : 94 mins

Cabin Fever is a comedy/horror film – and the presence of bit-part characters with cute names like ‘Sir Chug-A-Lot’, ‘The Bunny Man’, ‘The Happy Bald Guy’ and ‘Hospital Hottie’ should indicate the balance between genres which director Roth aims to strike. This isn’t a nudge-wink spoof in the style of ‘Scary Movie’, however - there are some gruesome moments as a flesh-eating virus munches its way through five generic white-bread American teens vacationing in a remote, Blair-Witchian forest. But the emphasis is much more on gross-out laughs, horror-buff in-jokes and surreal sight-gags, preventing any real build-up of tension as the victims succumb to their messy fate - James De Bello (from Crime + Punishment in Suburbia) the stand-out as a gloriously knuckleheaded uber-jock, his anti-squirrel jibe a stroke of sheer frat-house genius.

This is Roth’s debut, and is very much the work of a lifelong horror freak who can’t believe he’s actually been entrusted with an actual movie-camera. His script (co-written with Randy Pearlstein) is a wildly uneven, unapologetic grab-bag from countless earlier, better, scarier pictures – most obviously Night of the Living Dead, The Thing, The Evil Dead and Last House on the Left. But the fact that Roth had the idea of re-recording the incongruously lyrical songs from the latter splatterfest indicates he’s more than just another tiresome gore-geek.

Working as David Lynch’s assistant for five years clearly did him no harm at all – the presence of Lynch collaborator Angelo Badalamenti’s moody themes on the soundtrack adds an unexpected touch of atmospheric class. Roth even chucks in a distinctly Lynchian weirdo cop (Giuseppe Andrews) at one stage, typical of his film’s enjoyably freewheeling, anything-goes, scream/laugh-now-don’t-think-later attitude - one that proves almost as infectious as its eponymous bacillus.

10th July, 2003
(seen 7th June: Showcase, Dudley)

by Neil Young

-