***/**** Image A Sound A Extras B+
starring Rider Strong, Jordan Ladd, James DeBello, Cerina Vincent
screenplay by Eli Roth and Randy Pearlstein
directed by Eli Roth

by Walter Chaw Agreeably jejune in a way just north of ADHD obnoxious, Eli Roth’s shoestring splatter flick Cabin Fever is joyously prurient and disgusting in a way that recalls the early days of Sam Raimi and Peter Jackson. While not as witty as you might expect from the comparison (its humour born of the school of “trying too hard,” particularly an awkward bit at the end of the picture about the uses of a hillbilly shopkeeper’s rifle), Cabin Fever appears to be some sort of jambalaya about menstrual fear–dashes of Clive Barker’s “How Spoilers Bleed” and Stephen King’s “The Raft” mixed in with more direct references to classic splatter flicks (Night of the Living Dead, John Carpenter’s The Thing, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and so on–complete with David Hess’s deeply disturbing banjo score from Last House on the Left)–all wrapped up in what Joe Bob Briggs would dub the very model of the “Spam-in-a-cabin” diversion. It’s not all that scary, in other words, its outcome too inevitable to provide much in the way of tension with its built-in tension relievers–a slapstick stoner cop and a feral kid–the worst miscalculations in pacing and structure. When it works, though, it works with an invigorating ardour and intelligence that does justice to the idea that the horror genre, as an indicator species in cinema’s ecosystem, provides the keenest insight into our collective contemporary paranoia.

Jeepers Creepers 2
*½/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras B+
starring Ray Wise, Jonathan Breck, Travis Schiffner, Nicki Lynn Aycox
written and directed by Victor Salva

by Walter Chaw Beyond the pretty fair rhetorical question of what convicted child molester Victor Salva is doing making another film about children in peril, in showers, and pissing en masse in a field, Jeepers Creepers II is a surprisingly run-of-the-mill action/adventure film with horror elements that reminds mostly that Jaws is still the high-water mark for stuff like this. Promising to be a Spam-in-a-bus sort of picture, it washes out eventually as a rip-off that’s only missing someone deadpanning “We’re gonna need a bigger bus” when the creature from the deep starts pounding on their stranded conveyance. Credit is due Salva, however, for employing some sharp non-CGI creature effects, even if the premise this time around (and its showcase special effects set-piece) is starting to more resemble John McNaughton’s The Borrower and less an original concept of a demon that, for twenty-three days every twenty-three years (not insignificantly, the description of high holy Jewish feasts is set out in Leviticus: 23), gets to feed.