Part of my passionate affection for September comes from the afterglow of the summertime Box Office Bonanza. Caught in between the last-ditch blockbusters of August and the fawning Oscar-bait of October are a crop of films whose best content is probably contained in the trailer, but who are still better than waiting for the new TV season to start. Festival leftovers, high-concept action movies, Lifetime channel candidates and more all have one shining chance to ride whatever momentum is left in moviegoers hearts — and occasionally, true gems will shine through.
As a matter of fact, I think it’s mandatory. Everyone remembers the gem of a few years ago, The Blair Witch Project, a film whose popularity waned in direct proportion to its ubiquity — it was a great example of a surprise hit right in the middle of the fall, a low-buget horror movie that either terrified or nauseated audiences, depending on their tolerace for wobbling cinematography. It spawned devoted fans and passionate foes, made a perverse amount of money, and lead to a comically bad sequel that nobody saw. Lazy comics parodied it, lazy writers imitated it, and somehow it lent a load of credibility to the world of low-budget horror movies.
Now, I’ve seen Roger Corman’s Wasp Woman about six times. It’s a movie about a woman who experiments with wasp hormones to make herself look young, and then she turns into a giant wasp. Then she takes vengeance on her enemies and, as a giant wasp, kills them — at one point, she’s having sex with a guy, turns into a giant wasp, and eats him. Buzzbuzz, ahhh! ahhhh!, crunch.
There’s no credibility there. Nothing short of psychotropic drugs could suspend my disbelief far enough to be frightened by the thought of having a woman turn into a giant wasp and eat me while I’m having sex with her, because:
- I’m not likely to have sex with a woman who looked 50 yesterday and 25 today,
- even if I was, she’s not likely to have sex with me, and
- even if she did change into a giant wasp and eat me, I’d at least die knowing I did so with novelty, and not from a blood clot in an airplane bathroom.
In short, the only thing that movies like Wasp Woman make me scared of is dying an average death, and that’s not so much spine-tingling as it is comforting. I should be leaving a theater fearing what might lurk in every corner, not feeling warmly contented, which only goes to show you that these movies are the Rule of low-budget horror; Blair Witch represents the exception.
Despite this, every time another cheaply-made, studio-endorsed scary movie comes along, there are usually enough critics ready to line up behind it and tell us how original, clever, creative or creepy it is. Jeepers Creepers stands out in recent memory, and now there’s Cabin Fever.
Above: Cerina Vincent hones her use of the word “fuck” on the popular Fox Kids program, Goddamned Fucking Power Galaxy Rangers Or Some Shit.
Written and directed by Eli Roth, Cabin Fever is meant to be an homage to all of the cheezebag 1980’s horror movies that you can usually catch on your local FOX affiliate on a Sunday afternoon. Attempting to invoke Wes Craven, George Romero and anyone else who’s ever directed a horror movie, Cabin Fever takes five young people out for a good time, and then gives them a skin condition. A deadly skin condition.
(Are you scared yet? I am. The fucking movie is almost 90 minutes long. That I have to stretch this review out for another six minutes is terrifying enough; I can’t understand how I withstood sitting in a theater and actually watching this.)
Anyway, the five teens/students represent the five standard types of the horror film: The prissy rich kid, the surgically-enhanced slut, the virginal-looking tease, the caveman jock, and the generally average okay guy. None of them are remotely recognizable except for the latter, played by Rider Stong, formerly of Boy Meets World. It’s easier for the movie that they’re not, though, since it allows the audience to neatly slot them into whatever stereotype they’re supposed to be filling, without letting their fame get in the way.
After some brief establishing shots of the teens stopping in town, stealing a candy bar, hearing a gratuitous use of the word “nigger” and being creeped out by the locals, the group arrives at their isolated cabin in the woods. The prissy kid and the boob job girl immediately get down to the pointless sex scene, the tease and the harmless dork head out to the lake for a swim, and the jock disappears into the forest to shoot at squirrels — because, he says, “They’re gay.”
It’s important to realize that the dialogue in Cabin Fever is critical to understanding the film, as long as your conclusion is that everyone under twenty-two should be liquified and sold as engine lube. Where the grating conversations of The Blair Witch Project could at least be forgiven by the fact they were completely improvised, there’s nothing to indicate that the exchanges in Cabin Fever aren’t as tightly scripted as a Mamet film. And yet, if it’s possible, they’re even more inane than anything Heather, Josh or Mike could have screeched at each other as they trekked through the badlands of Burkittesville.
Consider this classic exchange:
Marcy, The Slut (Cerina Vincent, formerly Maya, the Yellow Galaxy Power Ranger!): Bert, you fucker! You nearly set fire to the whole fucking camp!
Bert, The Pre-Human Jock (James DeBello, formerly Dante Christopher in Swimfan): Ah, fuck off, it’s a fuckin’ campfire, isn’t it? Fuck!
Marcy (I can’t believe she was a Power Ranger! You get to see a Power Ranger’s boobs in this movie!): Fuck you, you fucker!
Now, you can go right ahead and tell me about verisimilitude and how if you were to actually come across a group of teenagers arguing in the woods about a campfire, they’d probably be saying “fuck” a lot. You can even tell me that I remind you of your mother when she’d scold you for swearing, because she used to say the same thing about nonsense words and sounding like those kids from the bad parts of town. You can say anything you want — it still stucks, and it illustrates the dangers of having your director write your screenplay.
Director: Okay, this is the scene where Burt does something stupid and everyone gets mad at him. I fell alseep at the bar last night, so I didn’t write anything. Um… okay, go.
Cerina Vincent: Bert, you fucker! You nearly set fire to the whole fucking camp!
James DeBello: Ah, fuck off, it’s a fuckin’ campfire, isn’t it? Fuck!
Cerina: Fuck you, you fucker!
Director: Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaand cut! Brilliant!
Cerina: I think the boom mike hit me in the forehead. Could we do another take–
Director: I said brilliant!
At any rate, the Cro-Magnon jock trudges into the woods and does what any right-headed jock would — he commits an abominable act. In this case, as he casually blows away wildlife, he accidentally shoots a hunter who’s huddled miserably in the woods. As Bert tries to apologize, he discovers that the hunter is horribly sick, the flesh literally melting off of his body. Bert flees back to his cabin.
Later, after more dialogue about fucking and the appearance of a stoner skateboarder guy who then kind of disappears, the hunter finds his way to the teens’ cabin. Seeing his rotten state, and in fear of catching whatever it is that’s killing him, the kids turn him away. Their compassion doesn’t go without consequence — after swatting him with bats and setting him on fire, the hunter collapses into the local reservoir, and then Cabin Fever — Boy Meets Plague really begins.
And then stops, and then begins again. And then stops. It’s hard to build suspense when you’re watching someone drink water that may or may not be poisoned. It’s even more difficult when the first character to succumb is the one with the least personality of the group. The snotty rich guy? At least then you could be happy. The cruel jock? Feel a surge of relief. The sort of okay guy? Feel some kind of sympathy. The boring blonde tease, who takes pictures without breaking stride or aiming her camera? Whose only dialogue is, “I can’t believe we set that guy on fire!” and “I want to go home!”? Meh.
To be fair, the movie has some genuinely funny moments. There’s a dopey local deputy, talking about hearty partying while leaning obliviously on the hood of a smashed and bloodstained truck, who’s a dead ringer for every small-town drop-out you’ve ever met. The previously-mentioned stoner is also good for a laugh, if only for his resurrection of saying, “Face!” when you’ve totally cut down someone.
Above: Now you too can be part of the witty homage that is Cabin Fever, with the upcoming Cabin Fever: The Adventure Game. Screech incoherently at other characters! Shout obscenities at women! Enjoy a series of misadventures before dying anyway! Coming soon to a console or PC near you!
But even that’s baffling. The movie can’t decide if it’s funny or scary or ironic or what — is it a parody? Is it a tribute? Does it even know? Is it worth trying to work through all of that confusion right there on screen, where everyone can see it? This movie is like a girl sobbing loudly in the middle of a high-school cafeteria — some people laugh, some get embarrassed, some people look on in sympathy, but everyone agrees that it something they could have gone without seeing. Do I really need to be this movie’s therapist?
No. Cabin Fever’s witty marketing tagline was, “Cabin Fever — Catch it!” As in, catch the movie, or catch the disease — it’s all the same to them. If only they realized how right they really were.
Comments (5)
So harsh, the movie wasn’t nearly as bad as you make it out to be. I actually found it really enjoyable because of the psychological angle of the friends turning on each other at the first sight of the virus…plus there was boobs…wait, where was I? Oh yeah. Boobs…
Regardless I thought the film was a great throwback to the 1980s horror cliche films (get high, drunk, or laid and you are dead) and a cool look into the human mind, much like 28 Days Later did earlier this summer.
But everyone has a different opinion.
I kept waiting for the psychology of actual cabin fever, the hysteria of being isolated and frightened, but I never really saw it.
First, the kids managed to find people every time they went looking for them; second, most of the action in the movie takes place outside of the cabin, sort of blowing the cabin fever angle; third, the only real interpersonal tension came when they isolated the blonde in the hut outside, after she became sick.
To give credit where it’s due, that was probably the best part of the film. The four survivors managed to rationalize themselves into thinking they were compassionate in their isolation of the fifth, and there was some actual tension between them and what they might find the next time they opened the shed door.
Too bad it got lost in the, “AHHH, I’M FUCKING MELTING FUCK!” of the rest of the movie.
what the hell was the first sex scene where at his climax she flipped him over and he as face down on the bed. what was happening there.
That’s a little thing I like to call, “the scariest fucking part of the movie.” Literally, too, because it actually involved fucking.
I think what was implied was that he was still in there while he was on his face, thus bending his weiner from one direction to the other. Maybe that’s one of those Kama Sutra things that hurts real good, because otherwise I’d imagine he’d be sobbing into his pillow.
That, or he really likes to go off on the mattress. You make the call.
That’s the URL to my LiveJournal post on this insane, insane movie (hey, you admitted to pimping your site in email taglines, I can do the same in my comments, right?). I can’t believe you didn’t mention the kung fu “PANCAKES”-screaming kid, which is the craziest thing I’ve ever seen in a movie that’s not fifteen seconds long and only found on horseandmidgetanalbeastiality.com. Also, turns out the stoner dude was played by the director, Eli Roth. Which may partly explain the insanity.