In classic dark comedy fashion, many of the film’s humourous elements are kept slightly more subtle, ironic and/or surreal too.
#Cabin fever 2002 series#
It’s an almost sitcom-like series of increasingly farcical slapstick-like events that wouldn’t be entirely out of place in a classic cynical TV comedy series like “ Bottom“. This then causes the locals to see the students as a deadly threat, which causes the students to then fight back etc. In the chaos of the fight, the students’ car is damaged, so some of them go off to look for help and end up either frightening or being frightened by the mean-spirited locals. He leaps into a local reservoir to douse the flames, spreading the water-borne bacteria. Later that night, the wounded man shows up at the cabin, looking for help… before spotting Bert and, quite understandably, getting angry at him.Įgged on by Bert, the students fight the infected man off… and accidentally set him on fire in the process. A “frat bro”-like student called Bert ( played by James DeBello) decides to go squirrel hunting in the woods whilst slightly drunk and ends up accidentally shooting a delirious infected man who then begins to lurch towards him, prompting Bert to shoot at him again before fleeing.
It is a traditional-style farce, where one character’s mistake spirals into a ludicrous chain reaction of increasingly bizarre and horrific events. Then there is also the plot of the film itself. On the other hand, the unlikeable characters in “Cabin Fever” have much more in common with the unremitting cynicism and deadpan satire that the dark comedy genre is known for. Yes, these characters may be a bit stupid or goofy, but they are often still written to be likeable in some way or another in order to make the audience sympathise with them and to create the kind of reassuring and amusing “feel good” mood that the comedy-horror genre is known for.
#Cabin fever 2002 movie#
Likewise, it differs from a comedy-horror movie for the simple reason that comedy-horror movies often include likeable main characters.
Since horror relies on empathy to be frightening, the many horrific events of this film often deliberately come across as more amusing than frightening because not only does the audience not care whether the characters survive but many are written to be obnoxious enough that their grisly death scenes are more cathartic than frightening. They are meant to be figures of ridicule and derision, rather than more realistic examples of human evil. Whether it is the immature, sleazy, annoying and/or boorish behaviour of the students, the eccentric/mean-spirited locals, the shock value of an initially “friendly” shopkeeper suddenly saying something incredibly racist etc… virtually all of the characters in this film are intentionally designed to make the viewer dislike them instead of empathising with them.Īlthough horror movies can use a cast of untrustworthy and unsympathetic characters to create a genuinely disturbing atmosphere ( see Nicolas Winding Refn’s 2016 film “The Neon Demon” for a chilling example of this), “Cabin Fever” is a dark comedy because the characters are so cartoonishly unlikeable. Both the holidaying students and the locals are not only somewhat stylised, but also deliberately written to be unlikeable. Yet, to my surprise, it actually turned out to be a surprisingly cynical and “edgy” dark comedy movie that – whilst it includes some gruesome special effects – was more likely to make me laugh than shudder.Īlthough the plot of this film is – on paper – very much a horror movie plot, involving a group of American university students holidaying in a remote rural cabin who end up becoming infected with a gruesome flesh-eating disease, the way pretty much everything in the film is handled often has a lot more in common with a traditional dark comedy than the horror genre ( or even the more goofy and “feel good” mood of the comedy-horror genre).įor starters, there are the characters. From the critic quotes on the DVD cover and Roth’s later reputation for extreme horror movies, I was expecting it to be a genuinely scary horror film. Well, out of a mixture of vague curiosity and early 2000s nostalgia, I finally got round to watching Eli Roth’s 2002 film “Cabin Fever” for the first time ( SPOILERS ahead).
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