THE FOLLOWING REVIEW COMTAINS SPOILERS OF THE DISCUSSED FILM. READERS DISCRETION IS ADVISED.
Body horror films can tear off the masks and expose people for who they really are. Sometimes, what’s inside is not pretty.
PLOT
Cabin Fever follows five students taking a vacation to a remote cabin to celebrate fall break: Jeff, Marcy, Paul, Karen & Bert. It all seems to go well despite Paul being bit by an erratic child named Dennis (Matthew Helms). They make the best of it on the first day when Paul & Karen sunbathe and swim on the lake while Jeff & Marcy have sex. The fun ends once Bert goes out hunting for squirrels and encounters an ill hermit named Henry (Arie Verveen) who got sick after being exposed to the blood infection that came from his dead dog. Rather than trying to help him, he flees and chooses to not tell anyone about it. By night, the group has a campfire and meet a friendly drifter nicknamed Grim and his pet dog Dr. Mambo. The campfire would be interrupted by rain and moments after returning to the cabin, Henry would beg for help. When Bert turns him down again, the hermit recklessly decides to steal the groups car before vomiting blood. Everyone would push him away until the ladies accidentally light him on fire which he runs away in the process. The following day, due to the car being damaged in the previous altercation, Bert & Jeff go to find a female butcher and ask her to take them into town for help, until they change their mind realizing she knows Bert. A young deputy named Winston (Giuseppe Andrews) gets called in to the cabin, who believes Paul’s account on what happened and promises to call in a tow truck. By nightfall after the guys came back, Paul would find rotten boils on Karen’s thighs that causes the group to quarantine her in a tool shed across the cabin. By the next day, Bert has finished fixing the truck but finds himself sick as well. He ends up going to town to seek a doctor. Wanting to avoid being next, Jeff takes his own form of isolation by heading into the woods with the remaining beer Bert bought. Bert returns to the general store from the first day and calls for help. The boy Dennis bites him and gets exposed to his sickness. Rather than blame his son for getting sick, his father Tommy (Hal Courtney) blames Bert and chases him, intending to kill him with the assist of his friends Andy (Tim Parati) & Fenster (Richard Boone). Worried of already having the disease, Paul & Marcy impulsively have sex. After this moment, Paul chooses to go look for Jeff. Instead, he finds Henry’s corpse floating in the reservoir, confirming it to have affected the water supply. When he gets too close, he accidentally falls in and unknowingly gets exposed as well. While waiting, Marcy chooses to shave her legs which only peels off her flesh, confirming her to be sick too as she worried. When she runs outside in panic, she gets eaten alive by a rabid Dr. Mambo. By the time Paul returns, he finds Marcy’s remains and defends himself when shooting the dog. Noticing Dr. mambo fed on Karen, he kills her out of mercy. When Bert returns, he is shot by Tommy and his posse, causing Paul to kill them all on his own, ignoring the reason for their attack. He would then search for Jeff again and when finding a cave, he only finds Grim’s corpse instead inside. On his own, Paul would go search for help by taking Tommy’s truck, only to crash when hitting a deer. He then ditches the truck and goes on foot, leading him to find Winston with underage drinkers, not sending the tow truck like he promised. When he gets radioed in to kill infected people, Paul defends himself again by knocking him unconscious. After this, he tries hitching a ride on a busy street, only for him to pass out. A trucker would take him to the hospital, but he would be too dazed to tell any doctor or officer the source of the infection. However, he’d realize how sick he is when seeing the same flesh boils on him that everyone else had. Ironically, Winston would be instructed to take him to a regional hospital when the local doctors don’t think they can take care of him. Jeff would emerge from the woods and be in relief to have survived the outbreak, only to be killed by the officers for the sake of eliminating possible threats. His body, along with the others from the group, would be burnt in a pit as well, whereas Paul is instead left for dead and dumped into a stream. The film would end with his blood further contaminating the water and two children use said water for a lemonade stand to share with townsfolk, unaware of its contamination.
THOUGHTS
Eli Roth has been the same that has stuck in our minds for making his vision of entertainment going into the 21st century. Whether or not you would see anything, you respect him for pushing boundaries like the people before him. His directorial debut is no exception because it took so many directions no one would have thought it would take. Getting sick is always scary because depending on what kind of sickness you got, you won’t be sure on how it’ll strengthen or weaken you. In this case, we witnessed one so strong it was eating the body inside and out. If you think that doesn’t bother you, don’t complain when your skin falls apart. Garrett Immel’s makeup effects are so creative you believe these people are physically falling apart. This fictional infection does express the theme of inner-selfishness where we can get concerned on solely protecting ourselves from what can harm us. Living through a post COVID era, and noticing this film was made during the Anthrax spike, which was only days apart from 9/11, I understand that feeling of fear. But with all the self awareness that’s been said, you can become the real monster when choosing to ignore those in need. The core characters go through this dilemma because while it is realistic to social distance in order to recover, they were deep down more worried for themselves than each other. The only two people that feel regretful upon their actions are honestly the women. Jordan Ladd’s Karen & Cerina Vincent’s Marcy are the true victims because they intended to kill Henry until it was too late. The second Karen chose to drink water from the sink, they were doomed before they could know it. Most of the body horror imagery goes to them because they’re far from looking the same when they reach a cruel demise. It’s only those two I’m frowning for whereas the guys hardly try to be reasonable with their actions. Joey Kern made Jeff quite questionable because he thought smart to leave the cabin and isolate himself from others, he didn’t have to take the beer when they had nothing else to drink apart from the contaminated sink water. It was indeed a shocker for him to overcome the outbreak only to be killed for it because it showed the consequences of putting yourself before others. He did say he didn’t anyone of them to get sick after Karen, but he sure didn’t hesitate going on his own. And there’s no doubt how big of an idiot Bert is thanks to an well executed performance from James DeBello, because he is the reason the outbreak reaches them and passes on to the town. Rather than trying to help, but he chose to ignore the problem and set up his own comeuppance. Rider Strong had this unexplainable charm as Shawn in Boy Meets World, but that is out the window when playing Paul in this movie. Before the outbreak, he’s just being nonchalant in trying to get what he wants which is to sleep with Karen. But once he realize he couldn’t get what he wanted, he moves on to the closest thing which was Marcy out of impulse and then kills everyone that’s a threat to him. Even when gets laid which was his original goal, he still chooses to think of himself first when putting the Listerine on his penis to avoid getting sick. There is a point taken that Karen was a mercy kill, but his remorseless makes me hate him. And by the time people refuse to give him proper help, that serves as the consequences on the cycle of cruelty. We may not know the whole town, but we pray they have a better chance in overcoming the much worsened outbreak. This movie hits its check marks in being standardly entertaining of a horror film, but there are a handful of things that confused me as I watched along. From the top, why isn’t there a first aid kit in the General Store? If that place sells tires, there’s gotta be something close to bandages that could be given to Paul. Now we know Grim was outside the cabin before the group goes back in, but where does he go when Henry shows up? Like it wouldn’t be a bad idea to see him leave to cue the next scene rather than leave him he and have us confused until the whammy that he dies too. That decision was more confusing than Henry not being able to drive away after starting the car. Also, Winston is definitely an idiot to ignore all the blood left on the car. He points out what a mess it is due to it being shot at and the windshield being damaged, yet feels nonchalant with the blood. The fact he didn’t give Paul a radio to check in again is ridiculous because the latter could’ve used it to be more demanding of a tow truck to help the group repair it. The big mistake in quarantining Karen is having her go to the barn rather than leaving her in the room she already exposed her contamination. And I can’t be the only one who thought the general store owner Tommy should’ve told Dennis to stay on the swing because that’s what led to him getting sick via biting Bert who kept his distance at first. Again, why the hell did Marcy choose to shave her legs if she knew her legs were already infected? Call that the money shot all you want for a body horror flick, but she did not have to make her situation worse. Lastly, why hasn’t the town gotten infected sooner if the kids were getting their water from the lakes for the sake of lemonade? I mean if that is the reason the dog got sick, that should be specified too. Ignore this, then I think you’ll still respect this movie for what it’s going for. In short, Cabin Fever is a horror film worth the time if you are one to be paranoid of infections or have a kick out of body horror as a whole.
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