Cabin Fever

USA, 2002. Directed by Eli Roth. Rider Strong, Jordan Ladd, Joey Kern, Cerina Vincent.

Tacky horror movie which in the right hands and with the right screenplay might have become a horror classic, but as it is it's an undisciplined mess. Director Eli Roth presents us with familiar characters and situations and a plot which lacks the fine tuning necessary to suspend disbelief long enough for us to question the logic of why people do what they do. The geography is a problem too - at some points the kids appear to be in the middle of nowhere, at others they appear to be just across the way from various homesteads which might potentially offer assistance. There's a presumably deliberate attempt to evoke a sense of the menace of Deliverance, but the hillbillies seem more like caricatures than characters. I appreciate this was intended as a horror-comedy, but it didn't really work for me.