fter graduating from college, five friends—Paul (Strong), Karen (Ladd), Jeff (Kern), Marcy (Vincent) and Bert (DeBello)—travel to an isolated cabin in the mountains for a week of uninterrupted relaxation and partying. Upon arrival, Jeff and Marcy immediately head to the bedroom for some private recreation, while Paul and Karen go for a swim.
At the lake, Paul tries to express his romantic feelings for Karen, who plays coy but seems receptive to his advances. Meanwhile, Bert takes a rifle into the woods to hunt squirrels. Instead, he accidentally shoots a disheveled-looking vagrant who says that he's sick and needs help. Disgusted, Bert runs back to the cabin and doesn't tell anyone of the incident.
Later that night, the man shows up at the cabin, still begging for some kind of aid. Fearing that his condition may be contagious, the kids refuse him and shut the door. Outside, the man notices their truck and tries to steal it, but they drive him away, setting him on fire and destroying the truck in the process. The infected man heads for the woods and falls into a reservoir, which also happens to be the cabin's main water source.
After drinking a glass of water, one of the kids develops bloody red splotches and is exiled to the woodshed by the other four. They promise to find some help, but it proves a difficult task without transportation or cell phone service. To make matters worse, a vicious dog has begun lurking near the cabin and attacking anyone that comes near. Will the survivors discover the origin of the bacteria in time to save themselves? Or will they fall, one by one, to the mysterious, flesh-eating disease?
A gory homage that's only skin deep
Clearly, Cabin Fever is first-time feature director Roth's love letter to cult horror classics such as The Evil Dead, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Last House on the Left. Roth weaves together the best elements of these films—the horny kids, the isolated cabin, the bizarre backwoods folk, gratuitous nudity and lots and lots of blood—but never comes close to equaling their genius. The film amounts to significantly less than the sum of its parts.
As any collector will tell you, an authentic vintage piece is always worth more than a reproduction. Then again, had Cabin Fever been made in the 1980s, it probably wouldn't be worth more than a footnote in modern cinema history. It's only now, in this post-postmodern era, that it seems notable for its embracing of the conventions and principles of its predecessors. What might have seemed derivative or predictable 20 years ago seems refreshing and innovative after the recent trend of deconstructionist films such as Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer.
While the director deserves credit for paying homage to the genre, that doesn't mean he should be exempt from the basic principles of filmmaking. This summer's 28 Days Later also set out to honor the horror tradition, but managed to do it with substance and meaning. Cabin Fever has a thin, unevenly paced plot, and the characters are little more than one-dimensional stereotypes. There's the Nice Guy, the Cool Guy, the Jerk, the Slutty Girl and the Virtuous Girl. With the exception of the latter, they all turn out to be pretty unlikable people, so it's tough to care whether they live or die in the end.
