'Cabin Fever' is phenomenal guilty pleasure

By Margaret A. McGurk
The Cincinnati Enquirer

CABIN FEVER (Rated R) Three Stars (Good) A witty spin on old-school horror pits five spoiled college kids against a flesh-eating virus. With James DeBello, Rider Strong, Joey Kern, Jordan Ladd, Cerina Vincent. Written and directed by Eli Roth. Lions Gate Films, 94 minutes.

The result is a scary movie that's worth the gross-out.

The set-up couldn't be more familiar. Five spoiled college kids head to the woods for a little party-hearty vacation. Jeff (Joey Kern) and Marcy (Cerina Vincent) jump straight into bed. Karen (Jordan Ladd) and Paul (Rider Strong) are stuck in a friends-or-lovers tango. Obnoxious Bert (James DeBello) just wants to drink and shoot squirrels.

The good times, of course, cannot last long as this is a horror movie, and Roth follows the rules. Some of these guys are doomed to die in the nastiest possible ways.

Their nemesis is not a crazed axe-murder, however. It is a disease, a vicious, flesh-eating infection that devours its victims from skin to bone in about a day. The first victim we see is a forest-dwelling eccentric (Arie Verveen) who shows up at the cabin pleading for help.

The young folks respond with panic. As one observes glumly, "He asked us to help him, and we set him on fire."

Things really get scary when Karen shows signs of infection. Trapped and terrified, the young folks drink heavily, agonize over their choices and go more or less nuts. Meanwhile, complications pile up, including a mad dog, suspicious locals and a bizarre deputy who would rather party than police.

Roth shows a sense of humor about ingredients that he borrows from such films as "The Evil Dead," "The Last House on the Left," even "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" — as in a funny scene when the camera lingers in deliberate and obvious slow motion shot over Vincent's shapely backside.

True, the movie is basically about gore, screaming teens, and disintegrating flesh. But "Cabin Fever" has enough brains to rank right up there with the best of the guilty pleasures.

Rated R for strong violence, gore, sexuality, language, brief drug use.