Baffling – that's the first word that pops into my head when I think about Cabin Fever, the seven-years-in-the-making old-school horror flick with a heart from writer-director Eli Roth.  It's one thing to earn accolades from fans of this particular genre, seeing as they're all a little touched in the head (but in a much better way than, say, people who dig Ashton Kutcher flicks).  It's another thing to have critics trying to invent new ways to hurl praise in the direction of Roth and Fever.  And it's something else altogether for studios to instigate a fierce bidding war over The Little Film That Could, which is really The Little Film That Kinda Came Close But Didn't.

Fever was one of the biggest acquisitions at the 2002 Toronto International Film Festival despite screening in their far-out Midnight Madness program.  Even in terms of Midnight Madness movies, Fever was one of the weaker offerings I've seen up there over the last seven years.  I get the comparisons to George Romero's Night of the Living Dead and, more closely, Sam Raimi's The Evil Dead, but there's nothing in Fever to indicate it's anything more than an homage to those pictures.  It isn't bad, and it's certainly better than the typical slasher-flick-set-to-modern-rock crap we've suffered through over the last several years.  But Fever sure ain't the second coming, either.

If anything, Fever is going to seem like a bit of a rip-off of surprise summer hit 28 Days Later, in that the story involves a communicable disease transmitted when victims hoark up gobs of blood on the uninfected.  Just to set the record straight, before anyone accuses anyone else of shenanigans, Fever was filmed and its US distributor put it on the release schedule before Later was a hit here or in the UK.  But that doesn't really stop Fever from being especially unimpressive coming so soon on the heels of Later.

The story is almost the typical horror scenario:  Five young adults finish their final exams and take off into the woods, where they've rented a cabin for a week of partying before they have to deal with being grownups.  There are a pair of sexual deviants (Detroit Rock City's James DeBello and Cerina Vincent, who played Areola in Not Another Teen Movie), a pair of burgeoning romantics (Boy Meets World's Rider Strong and Jordan "Daughter of Cheryl" Ladd), and the obnoxious backwards baseball hat-wearing fifth wheel (Joey Kern, Supertroopers).  Add pot smoking, booze, bare breasts, no cell phone signals, a truck with engine trouble and a late-night visit from a hermit with a flesh-eating virus, and...well, you can imagine what happens.

Fever generates its horror via paranoia instead of the usual loud bumps, and that's cool.  I also like the parallels between the story and the way people reacted to AIDS back when it first reared its ugly head.  And the very odd scenes involving Bunyon County's party-obsessed cop-on-a-bike (DRC's Giuseppe Andrews) are worth half the price of admission by itself.  The actors all perform admirably, plus it's refreshing to see a horror film without a rap star thrown in as a calculated marketing ploy.  And although Fever isn't the film that's going to save the genre, it still comes a whole lot closer than Freddy vs. Jason did or Jeepers Creepers 2 will.

1:34 -

for strong violence and gore, sexuality, language and brief drug use