Thinking I’d enjoy a throwback movie set in the woods, I happened upon this multi-award winning (horror awards) movie from a couple of decades ago by Eli Roth and thought, sounds good! Um, no.
When a group of college grads decide to head out to an isolated cabin for a week, they quickly discover the nearby townspeople are, well, interesting. At the cabin itself, the friends’ personalities start to shine through, with Backwoods Bert taking a gun out to shoot squirrels, yet accidentally hitting a flesh eating virus-infected local who is hiding out in the woods instead. The local survives and shows up at the cabin later that night, but Bert convinces his friends to set the man on fire. Afterwards, the crispy crazy falls into the town’s water reservoir and dies, infecting the drinking water.
Of course, it isn’t long before one of the friends drinks some of the water and shows signs of infection too. Her “friends” turn on her, but soon others are infected and townies take it upon themselves to try to quash this outbreak in a very final way. Throw in crazed animals, a weird cop, dead cell phones, and other horror clichés and you’re sure to understand why it was all I could do to watch this movie to its end.
If you’re looking for a good horror movie set in the woods, you won’t go wrong with Deliverance, The Blair Witch Project, or The Ritual. Save yourself some time and choose one of them instead of Cabin Fever for your 31 Days of Horror.
- Top Scare: Peer Pressure
- Heartbeats: 1 1/2 out of 5
- Gore Factor: 3 1/4 out of 5
- Scare Factor: 1 3/4 out of 5
- Recommended for: 16 and up due to violence, sex, and gore