Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #10060 in DVD
• Released on: 2004-03-15
• Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: PAL
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 92 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
A sneaky and surprisingly smart horror flick, Cabin Fever sets up all the clichés of its particular subgenre (what might be called the "sexy young people go into the woods" horror movie, featuring hostile redneck locals, dead animals on hooks, cars that suddenly stop running, and so on) and by the end has played a clever twist on every standard element, often to darkly comic effect. What's the plot? Well, five sexy young people (Rider Strong, Jordan Ladd, Joey Kern, Cerina Vincent, and James DeBello) go to an isolated cabin where they contract a nasty bacteria that eats their flesh; this, combined with a bad-tempered dog and a party-loving police deputy (Giuseppe Andrews, giving a particularly funny performance), leads everyone into confusion and bloody chaos. Some of the ironic twists are a little obvious, but most of them effectively subvert your expectations to entertaining effect. --Bret Fetzer

Special Features

• 40 minute feature with director Eli Roth
  
• Beneath the Skin - behind-the-scenes featurette
  
• The Rotten Fruit
  
• 5 separate audio commentaries featuring director, cast and crew
  
• Theatrical trailers
  
• TV spots

DVD Technical Information:

• Running Time: 92 mins
  
• Region Code: 2
  
• Aspect Ratio: 2.40 Wide Screen
  
• Subtitles: English, English for the hearing impaired
  
• Soundtrack: Dolby Digital 5.1: English

Synopsis
Eli Roth makes an auspicious debut with CABIN FEVER. Taking an otherwise traditional set up for a horror film, Roth infuses it with enough energy and originality to make it feel completely fresh. Five friends, just finished with college finals, head for a cabin in the woods to party and embrace their newfound freedom. There's the cute but uptight Paul (Rider Strong), who yearns for pretty lifelong platonic friend Karen (Jordan Ladd); the attractive, but slightly stupid couple Jeff (Joey Kern) and Marcy (Cerina Vincent); and the brute jock, Bert (James DeBello). While shooting squirrels in the woods, Bert accidentally nicks a man, who appears to be suffering from a disgusting disease. Bert returns to the cabin, choosing not to share this information with the gang. But later that night, when the man knocks on their door, the beast is unleashed. Unlike most horror films which make the horror gruesomely visible, the evil in CABIN FEVER is invisible--and highly contagious. And when Karen begins to show signs of contamination, the bond between these close friends begins to unravel. Roth's blackly comic directorial debut shows clear influence from the early films of Sam Raimi (THE EVIL DEAD) and Peter Jackson (BRAINDEAD).

Customer Reviews

i could pull a better film out of my bum
im sorry but this is nothing more than an a assembly line of scenes stolen from better film that have thrown together by a director who clearly dosent know what he's doing,this one is worth missing

Utter garbage
By far and a way the worst, absolute crappest film I've ever seen in my life - what a complete load of tedious, predictable garbage. Don't waste your money, this film sucks.

Empty, vapid and a real disappointment.
Cabin Fever (2003) is director Eli Roth's attempt to revive the splatter film genre, by here combining elements of George A. Romero-style zombie horror with touches of "the kids in the cabin" theatrics of Sam Raimi; all tied together with further references to films such as Sleepaway Camp, Dawn of the Dead, The Crazies, Deliverance, Sothern Comfort, Evil Dead and The Last House on the Left. Sadly, for all the clever references, buckets of gore and sporadic bursts of T&A, the film is ultimately devoid of all sense of character or empathy; giving us a film that fails to create any kind of emotional resonance with the audience or anything that leaves a lasting impression after the final credits have rolled.

Now, before I continue, let me just say, I actually really dislike writing negative reviews for things. I mean, who am I to tell you what is or is not a "good film"? Just because I didn't enjoy it... it doesn't mean you won't love it. In fact, you could be reading this review right now thinking what a great films this is, and how I should probably stick to fawning over Japanese Yakuza thrillers or forgotten French New Wave. But I do love horror. And more importantly, I love film. I've enjoyed all kinds of horror; from the sheer style and old-fashioned frights of The Golem or Nosferatu, right the way through to Hammer Horror and pure exploitation. I've enjoyed films as disparate and diverse as The Wicker Man, Don't Look Now, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, An American Werewolf in London, Saw and Scream, have loved the seedy cinema of Jean Rollin and the high-style of Dario Argento and everything else; right the way through to the stalk-and-slash style developed in the 70's and 80's with films such as Halloween, Friday the 13th, and A Nightmare on Elm Street.

With this in mind, I naturally wanted to love Cabin Fever. It was touted at the time as being very much a horror film for people who loved horror films, with clever references, inventive scenarios, lots of blood, and a knowing sense of irony. Sadly, the only thing it really lives up to is the violence, which is rendered useless by the utter lack of anything approaching a character we could care about. As a result, there is no real horror in this film because it's so impossible to feel anything for these empty, two-dimensional characters; especially with them being both so badly written and underdeveloped. As it is, their deaths become meaningless and their suffering used only as a means of titillating the blood lust of teenage boys. Now, obviously, I have nothing against violence in cinema, but the old adage that a little goes a long way is certainly true. For me, the most memorable scenes of violence are the ones that hold the most dramatic weight; the ones that feel real and very much believable, where we can feel for the characters in that situation and apply our own various psychological fears and anxieties alongside it.

Roth is clearly trying very hard to endear himself to the horror community, but is missing out on all the major cornerstones of what made those old classics so memorable and appealing. I'm talking about mood, character, style, atmosphere, imagination... etc. Cabin Fever has none of this, unless of course, you call racist rednecks ripped from Deliverance and the iconic music from Last House on the Left frightening. Some would argue that Roth is simply trying to follow in the footsteps of his mentor Quentin Tarantino, but you have to remember, Tarantino was genuinely radical with what he did; especially for those first three films, Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown. The dialog was unique; filled with wit and pop-culture references, but entirely believable to his characters and the world in which the film was set. Likewise, his use of colour, composition, music and editing were all iconic and unlike anything else we were seeing during the first half of the 1990's.

Compare this to Roth's particular style of filmmaking, which mixes crude attempts at frat-boy humour, wanton aggression, vicious violence, and knowing nods towards sexism, misogyny and even xenophobia and it becomes clear that if Tarantino was once considered to be the Bob Dylan of the radical, post-80's film generation, then Roth is this generation's cinematic equivalent of Limp Bizkit. Like Tarantino he's clearly seen a lot of films and borrows, references and pastiches with the best of them, but unlike Tarantino, you get the sense that Roth doesn't really love films, but rather, is in awe of the violence that they present to him. This is clear throughout Cabin Fever, which substitutes character development for crap jokes and plot for a series of well-executed (but meaningless) special effects. By all means feel free to disagree and offer your own opinion, but for me, as a long-time fan of horror cinema, Cabin Fever was a great disappointment.