Cabin Fever

Writer-director Eli Roth clearly loves the slasher movies of the 1970s and '80s; his quirky low-budget Cabin Fever is an homage, bringing a bunch of college kids--the usual three guys and two girls--together out at an isolated cabin and sending unexplainable evil to threaten them. But the villain here is not some skulking killer in a hockey mask, or a supernatural force--rather, it's a flesh-eating virus. In depicting how the chums turn on one another as their fears and symptoms escalate, the film offers up plenty of graphic gore, but it also sports a broad streak of morbid humor, so much so in fact that some will take it for a parody. Granted, the fright tricks are too old to be truly terrifying, and the jokes evoke mild giggles rather than gales of laughter; still, the mixture is sufficiently eccentric to make it worth a look for those who can tolerate the abundant bloodletting in this lowbrow cult classic in-the-making. Recommended. [Note: DVD extras include four audio commentaries with director Eli Roth and others (including Roth and costar Rider Strong, “who talked so damn much we had to move him to another track”), a “chick vision” option (which automatically blocks out the film's most frightening scenes), a facetious “family version” brief segment with an intro by Roth, three segments of stop-motion fruit foul-mouths “The Rotten Fruit” (12 min.), a “Beneath the Skin”  behind-the-scenes documentary (29 min.), a “Pancakes” segment (2 min.), and a trailer. Bottom line: a fun and fleshy extras package for a better-than-most teen horror flick.](F. Swietek)