| Cabin Fever | |
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 Theatrical release poster | |
| Directed by | Eli Roth |
| Written by |
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| Story by | Eli Roth |
| Produced by |
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| Starring | |
| Cinematography | Scott Kevan |
| Edited by | Ryan Folsey |
| Music by | |
Production companies |
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| Distributed by |
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Release dates |
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Running time | 94 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $1.5 million[1] |
| Box office | $30.6 million[1] |
Cabin Fever is a 2002 Americancomedy horror film[2] co-written and directed byEli Roth (in his directorial debut) and the first installment in theCabin Fever franchise. The film starsRider Strong,Jordan Ladd,James DeBello,Cerina Vincent,Joey Kern, andGiuseppe Andrews. Inspired by a real-life experience where Roth developed a skin infection during a trip toIceland, the story follows a group of college students who rent a cabin in the woods and fall victim to an unknownflesh-eating disease.
Henry, ahermit walking in the woods, encounters his dog, dead from a blood infection, and becomes infected himself from contact with his dog's blood.
College students Jeff, Marcy, Paul, Karen, and Bert take a vacation to a remote cabin to celebrateOctober break. Bert leaves to hunt squirrels but accidentally shoots the now disfigured and bloody Henry. Despite Henry's pleas for aid, Bert flees and remains silent about the incident.
As the students gather around a campfire that night, they are joined by a friendlydrifter named Grimm and his pet dog, Dr. Mambo. When it rains, Grimm leaves with his dog. While the friends wait for Grimm, Henry stumbles into their camp begging for help. When Bert shuts the door on the sick hermit, he tries to steal the group's car whilevomiting blood. When Henry approaches Marcy and Karen, Paul accidentally sets him on fire.
The next day, while seeking help fixing their truck, Jeff and Bert encounter a butcher, but leave after learning that she is Henry's cousin. Paul calls police Deputy Winston, who promises to send up a tow truck. Paul tries comforting Karen, who is upset over Henry's death. After calming her down, Paul attempts to have sex with her, only to discover a bloody, infected wound on her thigh. The group isolates her in a shed.
After fixing the truck, Bert coughs up blood but hides it from the others and drives off after Paul and Jeff find out. Jeff takes the remaining beer and leaves, terrified of becoming infected. Bert seeks help at a convenience store but angers the owner after his disturbed son, Dennis, bites him. Bert flees, chased by Dennis's father and two friends. At the cabin, Marcy worries that they will all contract the disease. Paul comforts her and they impulsively have sex. Soon after he leaves the cabin to find Jeff, while Marcy takes a bath, crying. As she shaves her legs, the flesh begins to peel off and she runs outside in a panic, where she is mauled and eaten alive by Dr. Mambo.
Paul discovers Henry's body floating in the reservoir, and realizes that the infection is spreading through the water supply. Returning to the cabin, Paul finds Marcy's bloody remains and sees Dr. Mambo feeding on a weakened Karen. After killing the dog with Bert's gun, Paul mercy-kills Karen with a shovel.
A dying Bert returns to the cabin pursued by Dennis's father and his two companions. The posse kills Bert, and Paul kills all three of them. Paul looks for Jeff and instead finds Grimm's corpse in a cave. Paul takes the convenience store's truck, and, while driving, discovers that he is infected before hitting a deer. He reunites with Deputy Winston, who is partying with underage drinkers. Paul requests a ride to the hospital, but before the group departs, Winston is ordered to kill on sight several infected people on a killing spree.
Paul attacks but does not kill Winston. As he attempts to hitch a ride, he falls unconscious and gets picked up by a passing vehicle, whose occupants drop him off at a hospital. The doctors request Deputy Winston to transfer Paul to another medical facility.
The next day, Jeff, who has been hiding out and drinking in the woods, returns to the cabin. Initially crying after seeing the remains of his friends, he becomes ecstatic upon realizing that he survived. As he raises his arms in victory, he is killed by local police and his body burned with the remains of Bert and Karen. The sheriff asks Winston if he took care of Paul.
Two kids get water from the lake for their lemonade stand, not realizing that a barely alive Paul is in the lake and contaminating the water. The sheriff and his deputies stop by the convenience store, owned by the children's grandfather, where they buy glasses of lemonade.
Eli Roth co-wroteCabin Fever with friend and formerNYU roommate Randy Pearlstein in 1995 while Roth was working as a production assistant forHoward Stern'sPrivate Parts.[4] Roth was inspired to write the script after getting an intenseskin infection after working on a farm inIceland.[5] Early attempts to sell the script were unsuccessful because studios felt that the horror genre had become unprofitable.[6] In 1996, the filmScream was released to great success, leading studios to once again become interested in horror properties. Roth still could not sell his script, as studios told him that it should be more likeScream.[6] Many potential financiers also found the film's content to be unsettling, including not only the gore but also the use of the racial slur "nigger" early in the film.
Various elements of the script were inspired by Roth's favorite horror films, includingThe Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974),The Last House on the Left (1972), andThe Evil Dead (1981).[7]David Lynch, whom Roth had worked under during the early stages of his career, had signed on to executive produce the film.[8][5] However, Lynch is not credited in the final product.
The auditions for the character of Marcy had been scheduled to take place onSeptember 11, 2001.[6] The scene the producers had chosen for the auditioning actresses was the build-up to Marcy's sex scene with Paul. In the scene, Marcy is convinced that all the students are doomed and despite Paul's reassurances, she describes their situation as "like being on a plane, when you know it's gonna crash. Everybody around you is screaming 'We're Going Down! We're Going Down!' and all you want to do is grab the person next to you and fuck them, because you know you're going to be dead soon, anyway." Eli Roth and the producers tried to cancel the Marcy auditions, but the general chaos caused by the attacks made it impossible for them to reach many of the actresses who were scheduled to try out for the role.[citation needed] In October 2001,Jordan Ladd and James DeBello entered negotiations to join the film.Michael Rosenbaum was set to star in the film, but would later vacate the project.[8]
Filming onCabin Fever began in late 2001 and lasted 24 days,[9][10] on location inNorth Carolina.[11] Production was stalled after one day of filming due to ananthrax scare.[12] According to Roth, filming was shut down a second time due to a union dispute.[13] Cabin scenes were filmed at Catawba cabin, an isolated spot atRaven Knob Scout Reservation, nearMt. Airy, NC.[14] Roth originally wantedCerina Vincent to show her naked buttocks during hersex scene withRider Strong. Vincent, who had previously played a nudeforeign exchange student inNot Another Teen Movie (2001), was afraid that exposing too much of herself would lead to beingtypecast as a nudity actress and vehemently refused to bare her buttocks.[citation needed] At the peak of this conflict between the two, Vincent told Roth that if he wanted the shot so badly, he would need to re-cast the role with another actress. But they managed to reach a compromise, in which Vincent showed one inch of her buttocks on camera before Roth measured it for it to be precise. Bedsheets were then taped to her backside at the designated level and the scene was filmed.[15]
ComposerAngelo Badalamenti agreed to compose somemusical themes for the film out of enthusiasm for the material. However, the bulk of the film's score was composed byNathan Barr. Some of the music selected for the film was deliberately chosen by Roth for their connection to other horror films; in the opening scene for example, while the main characters are driving to the cabin, "The Road Leads to Nowhere", a song written and recorded forThe Last House on the Left (1972), is playing on the radio.[16]
The film premiered at the Midnight Madness section of theToronto International Film Festival (TIFF) in September 2002 and was the festival's closing feature film.[17][9] After a successful run at TIFF, the distribution rights to the film was sold toLionsgate for $3.5 million.[9]
Cabin Fever was released onVHS andDVD in March 2004, which includesaudio commentary tracks with director Eli Roth and the main cast as well as afeaturette entitled "Beneath the Skin", which provides a behind the scenes look on the film.[18] TheBlu-ray was released in February 2010, featuring Roth'sedited version of the film that was screened at TIFF.[19] The Blu-ray was created from the film'soriginal camera negative overseen by Roth, and includes a brand-new audio commentary with Roth and the main cast as well as a gallery of rare behind the scenes photos.[9]
Cabin Fever was released in the United States on September 12, 2003; it landed at No. 3 during its opening weekend, grossing $8.3 million on 2,087 theaters (an average of $4,137 per screen).[20] The film ended its theatrical run with a gross of $21.2 million in the U.S. and Canada and $30.6 million worldwide,[1] making it the highest-grossing film released by Lionsgate of that year.[20]
Uproxx reported thatCabin Fever drew "better-than-average" reviews.[21] Some critics complimented the performances from the leads as "solid"[22][23] while others judged them merely "adequate".[11] Their characters, however, were met with negative reactions:IGN and theLos Angeles Times'Manohla Dargis described them, respectively, as stereotypical[10] and "monumentally irritating".[24] Furthermore, IGN and Dargis criticized the film's lack of scares, delivering more jokes and gore.[10][24]Stephen Holden ofThe New York Times andPeter Travers ofRolling Stone disagreed; Holden saidCabin Fever "finds an unusually potent blend of dread, gore andgallows humor",[23] and Travers called it "a blast of good gory fun that just won't quit".[25]Kim Newman inEmpire andMaitland McDonagh inTV Guide awardedCabin Fever three stars out of five.[22][26]
Reviewers observed the film's homage to low-budget horror and thriller films, includingNight of the Living Dead,Deliverance,The Texas Chain Saw Massacre,The Evil Dead and its sequelEvil Dead II, andThe Blair Witch Project.[10][24][27] IGN saidCabin Fever "struggles valiantly to be both a worthy addition and simultaneous homage to these genres ... becoming instead a passably enjoyable slab of schlock", criticizing its failure to reinvent the films that inspired Roth's.[10] Conversely, Newman said: "There's a fine line between homage and simply stealing, but writer-director Eli Roth mostly manages the former".[26]Stephen Hunter inThe Washington Post saidCabin Fever compared poorly toThe Evil Dead andThe Blair Witch Project, describing it as "a loud, derivative grade-Z horror film of no particular distinction".[28] McDonagh saidCabin Fever was "moreStraw Dogs thanNight of the Living Dead", citing its theme of "degeneration of relationships under pressure".[22]
Some critics saidCabin Fever suffered from genre and tone inconsistencies,[11][29] withRoger Ebert in theChicago Sun-Times comparing the flaw to "kids on those arcade games where the target lights up and you have to stomp on it".[30] Ebert was critical that the film alternates between horror and "weird humor", getting nowhere; he said it "could develop its plague story in a serious way, like aGeorge Romero picture or28 Days Later".[30]Owen Gleiberman inEntertainment Weekly said, "Cabin Fever is what28 Days Later would have looked like had it been made without style, subtlety, grunge-of-night video photography, or fashionable apocalyptic pretensions."[31] Ebert gaveCabin Fever one-and-a-half stars out of four,[30] and Gleiberman said it was "a big, dumb, crude, noisy, goose-the-audience bash and proud of it".[31]
The review-aggregation websiteRotten Tomatoes gives the film a score of 62% based on 140 reviews, with an average rating of 5.6/10. The website's consensus reads, "More gory than scary,Cabin Fever is satisfied with paying homage to genre conventions rather than reinventing them."[32] OnMetacritic, the film earned "mixed or average reviews," with a weighted average of 56 out of 100 based on 31 reviews.[33]Peter Jackson, the director ofThe Lord of the Rings film series, was a notable fan ofCabin Fever. Having seen the film from aprint sent to him, Jackson suspended production onThe Return of the King twice in his native New Zealand to have it screened to his cast and crew members.[34] He complimented the film as "unrelenting, gruesomely funny bloodbath".[35]Quentin Tarantino also expressed his admiration forCabin Fever, calling Roth "the future of horror".[34]
Roth revealed in a 2010 interview that he had written atreatment for thesequel toCabin Fever as part of Lionsgate's distribution deal,pitching it as "aSong of the South horror movie filled with corpses and sex."[36] Since Lionsgate was unwilling to produce his idea, Roth entrustedTi West to direct the sequel entirely from West's own version.[36]Cabin Fever 2: Spring Fever was released in 2009.
Aprequel to the two previous films,Cabin Fever: Patient Zero, was directed byKaare Andrews in 2014.[37] Aremake of the original, also titledCabin Fever, was subsequently announced that same year, with Roth staying on as executive producer. Travis Zariwny directed the film usingCabin Fever's original screenplay co-written by Roth.[38] Despite being panned by critics upon its 2016 release, with critics calling it "pointless" and derivative,[39][40] Roth said he was genuinely happy with the remake.[41]
