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Cabin Fever is the longest setup to a joke I've ever seen in film form. It takes itself very seriously as a horror movie for the first hour or so, but strange little things happen along the way that start to tip you off that something's not quite right about this movie. Blink and you'll miss it, but there's a part early on where a couple is having sex, and then "the hot girl" of the story seems to mount him from behind and briefly give him buttsex...somehow, before cutting to the next scene. It's more of a "What the gently caress just happened?" moment than anything else, but it really sets the tone for the rest of the movie. Later on, if you had seen it in the theater or have a good sound system, you'll notice that the director purposely decided to add obvious sloppy, squishy noises during the 'fingering' scene. Even further, the stoner sheriff is guaranteed to make you question the nature of the movie. It's little bits of "WHAT!?" like that mixed in that eventually tipped me off that it was a comedy masquerading as a really bad Hollywood horror flick. At first I thought the flesh-eating disease was just making the main characters start tripping and hallucinating, but it's much more than that. Every character is a total stereotype. Rich rear end in a top hat kid, hot slutty girl, virgin girl, supposedly nice boy who pines for said virgin girl, frat boy jock, rednecks, etc. This makes it all the more fun once you realize that instead of rooting for them, you want them all to die. So when they start dying, you cheer. They're all one-dimensional. They're all annoying and silly. They make some of the dumbest decisions ever (hey, let's climb down a rickety ladder to check out a corpse floating in the water). Everything that happens to them is entirely predictable, not because it's a horror film, but because the story hits you over the head with it. So by the time you get to the kid who I affectionately refer to as "Kung-Fu Retard", you realize that you shouldn't have taken the movie as a serious part of the horror genre from the start. And yes, this does make all the difference. I don't see it as being a tribute to campy horror, either. It's way too goofy. I have, however, read a detailed review that compares Cabin Fever to an allegory of the AIDS epidemic. From the use of the word 'gay' by the main characters, to the apparent anal fixation throughout the movie (the afore-mentioned love scene, some of the dialogue, and a Bullet-Time gratuitous rear end shot), to the paranoia expressed before anyone knows what's causing the disease, and it's an accurate description. I wish I could find the review I read, but it works in context. At any rate, the entire movie is a very long setup for a hilarious climax, and once that point hits, it turns into full-blown comedy. It's weird, it's disturbing, it's completely surreal, and it's silly, but if you know what to expect, it's a lot of fun. I also personally think it's brilliant, because it plays a great practical joke on everyone who was expecting another teen slasher flick.  4/5
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Oct 2, 2004 07:48
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| # ¿ May 6, 2024 18:30 |
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