Cabin Fever is like a refreshing shot in the arm, or perhaps the head. And maybe not a shot, exactly, but a screwdriver. It's not a great film, but it's not really supposed to be -- which actually ends up making it great. Basically, it's a bloody good time, and I of course mean that very literally.

The film begins with five friends (Jordan Ladd, Rider Strong, James DeBello, Cerina Vincent and Joey Kern) graduating from college and setting out for a weekend vacation at a remote cottage in the woods, where they plan to get drunk and have sex. I imagine you have a vague idea about where it goes from there, right? If you don't, you may not be in the target demographic for this movie. Anyway, there is one couple, a boy and a girl who both clearly wish they were a couple, and the requisite goofy friend who plans to go squirrel hunting, and who makes a bet that he'll drink nothing but beer the entire weekend. It ends up being a pretty smart bet.

We know from the moment we see the cabin that things will go badly; in fact, we know from before we even enter the theater, because this is the kind of movie that you go see knowing full well that horrible, horrible things will happen, and that you'll be scared, and that hopefully you'll enjoy it. This is like a Friday The 13th film, where you take bets on who will kick the bucket first.

Except that this is much smarter than any Friday The 13th film. I saw this the same evening that I saw Freddy Vs. Jason, and while that was sort of fun in its own way, this is the real deal. It's also what I was hoping Rob Zombie's House Of 1000 Corpses might have been like. The director, Eli Roth (who also co-wrote the script with Randy Pearlstein) clearly loves horror movies, and so he's simply decided to make a really good one. He throws in one homage after another; the movie starts off evoking Evil Dead, and later moves on to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and, briefly, The Shining. There's also a shot of some grain elevators that are pretty reminiscent of something in a David Lynch movie, which makes sense, since Roth is Lynch's protege, and Lynch was an uncredited producer on this film (his regular composer, Angelo Badalmenti, also contributed portions of the score).

The movie isn't exactly scary, aside from a few jumps, but it does have a nice sense of unease to it, and Roth is really keen on escalating moments of sheer grossness. The villain here is not some masked killer or undead ghoul, but a nasty virus that eats away at the flesh of whatever it infects (killer hillbillies do factor in, but at a later point). The kids run into a homeless man who's skin is practically dripping from his body; later, one of the girls gets it, and so they stick her in the shed and try to figure out what to do. Every time they open the shed to check on her or bring her some water, Roth takes extreme delight in drawing out the suspense; we know she's going to just keep looking worse and worse. There's another scene that takes place in a bathtub that is about as cringe-inducing as cringe-inducing gets.

Those who enjoy looking for subtexts may wonder if the virus is an AIDS metaphor, since it first shows up after sexual intercourse. More important than that is the fact the movie contains sex and nudity at all, since they are requisites for this type of film, and also a lot of laughs. This is where the movie is elevated to some sort of classic level; Roth's sense of humor is spot on, and also, to put it mildy, non sequitur. You may get it, you may not; I got it, and I loved every bit of it. You'll see what I mean when you get to the scene with the surfer (played by Roth), or the sex scene, or the harmonica scene, or the pancake scene, or the absolutely brilliant payoff at the very end of the movie. I won't give away any of the jokes, not because I don't want to spoil them, but because they just wouldn't make sense outside of the film.

Roth joins the ranks of Richard Kelly (Donnie Darko') and Lucky McKee ('May'). They're all young directors who grew up on horror films in the eighties, and who are now making their own independent genre films that wear their influences on their sleeves, but at the same time are completely original and also a whole lot smarter. These movies -- and at the moment, this movie in particular -- put a really big smile on my face.