Skin-Crawling Max Horror Is Bloodbath You’ll Watch With One Eye Covered

Borrowing heavily from the Evil Dead and Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchises, Cabin Fever doesn’t exactly reinvent the wheel with its storytelling. When it comes to horror comedy films, it’s not about the destination, but the journey. Boasting an incredibly dark sense of humor, Cabin Fever has a disturbing amount of gore that will make you want to empty the contents of your stomach into your popcorn bag between fits of laughter.

Cabin Fever wastes no time establishing its premise because a quick exposition means more run-time for insane amounts of cinematic violence. We’re made aware of some sort of infection when we’re introduced to a hermit named Henry who looks worse for wear. While Henry aimlessly wanders through the woods looking for help, we meet to a group of friends who are getting ready to have a legendary weekend of partying in the woods where nothing could possibly go wrong.

While Jeff, Marcy, Paul, and Karen are getting familiarized with their surroundings, Bert decides to wander off and hunt for squirrels. Hoping to bring a trophy kill back to the cabin, Bert accidentally shoots Henry, but is unaware of his infection at this point in Cabin Fever‘s first act. In a panic, Bert returns to his group of friends without telling them about the incident.

But this isn’t the last we see of Henry in Cabin Fever. After drinking around a campfire for a few hours, the group of friends go back to the cabin and have an altercation with a now horribly disfigured and gravely wounded Henry who is pleading for help. After vomiting blood all over their car in a confused state of panic, Paul sets him on fire and the party is pretty much over at this point.

Though Cabin Fever is a generic horror film for countless reasons, its sense of humor juxtaposed with groundbreaking gore, as only Eli Roth can deliver, makes it a legendary film in its own right. A common reaction to the film is checking yourself for sores and lesions before shaving because worrying about your skin peeling off will become a genuine concern.

For its willingness to embrace all of the horror tropes that we’re familiar with, Cabin Fever earned over $36 million at the box office while receiving a 62 percent critical score on Rotten Tomatoes. Commercially, the film was so successful that it spawned three ill-fated follow-ups, including a 2016 remake. The remake attempted to play out like a more serious horror film, but earned an abysmal zero percent critical score because it alienated its core audience.

Despite the critical and commercial failings of its sequel and prequel installments, Cabin Fever is worthy of a watch if you want to bear witness to a horror movie that has a high kill count and a dark sense of humor. You can stream the title on Max today, but you’ll feel better if you watch it with a group of friends on a vacation that doesn’t involve a cabin in the woods.