So when it came to the sickness, Cabin Fever put the screws to me. We not only have bloody vomit, we have open sores, exposed organs, and a scene in which an ill-considered shave results in the remove of several layers of skin. There's nothing in here to match the violent horror of, say, the scene near the beginning of Dawn of the Dead in which a zombie makes dinner out of a woman's shoulder, but my skin did crawl on occasion. Fortunately, director Eli Roth doesn't rely solely on the gore, keeping the pacing swift and including more than a few nods to Cabin Fever's forebears like Night of the Living Dead and The Evil Dead.

Understand, however, that the virulent sickness is just a MacGuffin for the movie's real subject: the way the kids turn on each other when one of them gets sick. And here's the problem, at least for me. The film wants us to consider the idea that the kids who aren't visibly sick might be bad people for not helping the ones who are sick. I can't see it that way. What are they supposed to do, stay with the sick people, offer comfort but no medicine, get sick themselves, and die? Take them to a hospital without letting the administration know first of the horrifying new disease they've been exposed to, thereby possibly infecting dozens or hundreds of people? I think they behave in a rational way; they quarantine the sick and try to get them help. That they fail is an indictment of their lack of competency, not their lack of conscience.

So Cabin Fever didn't work for me on a moral level. So what. It's atmospheric, and it revisits genre classics without making us feel like it's ripping them off. And it's definitely gross.

Cabin Fever would like to be cut from the same cloth as these films, and it, at times, succeeds. It follows familiar patterns laid forth by its ancestors, like the creepy cabin locale, the dangerous hillbilly locals and the standard teen fodder to be mutilated and exterminated. As such, it is hard for Roth to ever find his own style in the midst of his numerous tips of the hat to his influences. The real innovation here is in the use of disease as the element of terror, a contemporary nightmare that serves well in the stead of a hockey-masked killer.

What the film is not is a well-crafted story. It is the freshman effort of a talent not defined, a film with many highs, but it somehow doesn't shake the doldrums of mediocrity until the final few moments, which careen wildly from nods to Jacob's Ladder and Night of the Living Dead.

That being said, the film showcases some of the best blood and guts moments in horror in many moons, and that makes it worth the price of admission. In particular, one scene involving the remnants of a dog attack is both horrifying and bittersweet. I am pleased to see a little more guts shown by filmmakers and studios in getting the gore on the screen.

Eli Roth has some feel for the conventions of horror, and loves playing in the stomping grounds of his heroes. I, for one, cannot wait to see him find his own voice as a horror filmmaker.