Next to haunted houses, the woods are one of the favourite haunts of horror flicks.
There are just so many things that can lay in wait for unsuspecting hikers and campers.
Think homicidal maniacs, ravenous cannibals, zombies, rabid
animals, grotesque mutants, aliens and nasty viruses.
In Cabin Fever, one of the nastiest screen viruses in a long while is just longing to prey on the five unsuspecting college students who venture into the North Carolina woods after their last day of classes.
It's more virulent and fast-acting than Ebola because it reduces its victims to living corpses in less than a day.
Eli Roth, who wrote and directed this exercise in excess, is not so much interested in where the virus came from as much as he is where it's going and how it's getting there.
Roth's Cabin Fever is a creepy gore fest that recalls such classic shockers as George Romero's Night of the Living Dead, Sam Raimi's The Evil Dead, Lawrence Kasdan's screen version of Stephen King's Dreamcatcher and, most recently, Danny Boyle's 28 Days Later.
It's a gratuitous, unapologetic bloodbath that's tinged with the kind of humour and characters that spring from the twisted mind of David Lynch.
A backwoods patrolman, the proprietors of a gas station and the people who live in the houses skirting the woods are bizarre counterpoints to the five campers.
Only in a horror movie or Twin Peaks would the young party animals not feel just a tad suspicious and apprehensive upon encountering the locals.
If the mysterious virus doesn't get them, the yokels surely will.
The campers are so obsessed with visions of drugs, booze and sex they go merrily to their doom as all good potential victims in horror flicks should.
As the horny, beer-guzzling jock who uses everything that moves as target practice, James DeBello provides most of the groans while Cerina Vincent and Jordan Ladd supply the obligatory female nudity.
Rider Strong is meant to be the most thoughtful of the quintet, and he certainly tries to be dramatic and realistic even as the mayhem escalates.
Joey Kern is suitably hateful as the conceited womanizer who'll sacrifice anyone to save his own slimy soul.
Cabin Fever is chock full of scenes guaranteed to make audiences wince in collective disbelief and nausea.
It may not be terrifying but Cabin Fever is most definitely stomach-churning as the infected lose body parts and spew gallons of blood before they melt away.
Though Roth makes it clear he's paying homage to the Evil Dead and Night of the Living Dead movies, he misses the most important aspect of his predecessors.
Evil in these films turned humans into zombies, which went on an eating rampage.
It was not an infection but unquenchable hunger that made those films so terrifying, shocking and unsettling.
Without that element in tow, Cabin Fever is just gross and laughable, often for all the wrong reasons.
This over-heated gorefest never achieves the fever pitch it promises.
(This film is rated 18-A)
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