Eli Roth's debut, Cabin Fever, seems to be hated by the majority on IMDb and many other critics. I, however, found this to be a rather enjoyable little film that just falls short of being great. To sum up this movie: take a bit of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, a bit of The Evil Dead, a couple of elements from The Thing and Last House on the Left and you have Cabin Fever. A horror movie about five teenagers going to holiday in a cabin in the woods after college where the nearest town is filled with hicks and everything is slowly getting infected by an unknown virus which starts to turn everyone against each other. Roth blends horror with a small amount of comedy which suits this type of movie.

The five teens are a mixed bunch (the dumb guy, the horny couple and the innocent couple). Most of them swear, drink, have wild sex and smoke drugs and because of this may seem annoying and clichéd, on the contrary, Roth has captured the attitude of what teenagers were (and still are) like. We do all that they do (well, not so much drugs..) and to me that makes them more realistic. The locals aren't so realistic and seem to be their for comic relief and body count (which isn't a bad thing). There is plenty of gore and plenty of scenes to make you squirm in disgust.

The reason I don't give this a really high score is because the pacing seemed jumbled to me. For me, the running time was really short and there were not enough scares throughout. This movie had potential to be more than the final product but I respect what Roth has done and considering it was his first movie it is remarkably good and for that I give it:

8/10

I'll start off by saying it's one of my favorite things when horror has good editing! Cabin Fever is not for everyone that should be obvious just from photos and the trailer so to whom complained about puking or how bad it is that's on you for sitting through it all. It's great how twisted this is with a bit of comedy; the cop Winston is one of the best things! Maybe I am odd but this is one of the most enjoyable horrors in the last couple decades!

Eli Roth's debut film as director shares some of the queasiness and disturbing atmosphere of his later HOSTEL horrors, albeit on a lower budget and with less intensity. Saying that, it's a darn sight better than HOSTEL PART II and even if it does share inevitable comparisons with the likes of THE EVIL DEAD and other set-in-the-woods shockers, that's not necessarily a negative. In fact I found CABIN FEVER to be a well-made film, focusing a little more on character than you'd expect from a teen movie and offering plenty of scares and tension during the running time. Okay, things fall apart twenty minutes before the end, and the film finishes on a silly joke rather than on anything more substantial, but nevertheless this is a thoroughly effective effort which definitely isn't for the faint-hearted!

Essentially the old teenagers-in-peril plot is utilised once more yet despite this, there aren't many clichés to be seen. Instead the film has an ambiance of '70s grindhouse flicks or genuinely frightening early '80s terror tales. The acting from the various cast members is decent throughout and one of the main reasons to keep watching, and the camera-work is great, with some really inventive moments. Being an Eli Roth film, there are the inevitable gore effects, all of which are sickeningly convincing. Roth goes for the gross-out on occasion, offering a cringeworthy and infamous leg-shaving scene and a woman's face missing, and eventually body parts are strewn around the landscape in full-blown gore movie mode. Yet the idea of having a flesh-eating virus as the villain is a pleasingly fresh one, and it makes for many paranoid moments as the characters (and viewers) attempt to figure out who's infected and who's clean. If the cheap, anything-goes climax had been more inspiring, this would have been a top-notch genre offering; as it is, it's a worthwhile and decent effort.