Cabin Fever has gained a cult fandom over the years, but Eli Roth's gory horror movie actually fills in some plot holes and expands upon its story through some brief—but important—deleted scenes.
Cabin Fever is a standout piece of horror cinema for a number of reasons. It’s a graphic and gross love letter to exploitation horror films from another era, but it also marks the directorial debut of Eli Roth, who has gone on to become a prominent voice in the horror genre, and a major force towards the ultra-violent brand of horror that his films like Cabin Fever or the Hostel series would popularize.
Cabin Fever is Eli Roth’s first film, but it’s also one of his best. It shows restraint in the right areas, and turns viscerally gruesome at a moment’s notice. The horror movie follows a bunch of college students who find themselves victim to a flesh-eating virus, and has even earned itself a number of sequels, plus a remake that re-uses the original film’s script without straying too far off course. Cabin Fever does a lot of things right, but there are a few moments in the film that are more vague than necessary; it turns out that Roth’s original vision actually cleared these things up.
Deleted scenes are par for the course, especially for a director’s first movie. Despite how there’s a handful of alterations made to Cabin Fever, the unrated director’s cut version of the film is only two minutes longer than the theatrical cut. The majority of these edits revolve around toning down the movie’s extreme violence, but some of the changes also happen to include important plot points. Cabin Fever does an irable job at telling a fairly self-contained story, but there's a dangling plot thread involving a mysterious corpse in the basement of the cabin. Two deleted scenes reveal that Paul (Rider Strong) holds one of the meddlesome locals that attacked them hostage. Paul’s plan is shortsighted, and doesn't just take care of a threat; he hopes to use this person to help prove his innocence through this bizarre situation.
A follow-up deleted scene shows the cops taking no chances with the contents of the basement; they blast the room full of shotgun fire, then set the whole thing ablaze. It solves the problem, but the scene also contained a wealth of viscera and gore all over the walls that were likely too much for an R-rating. The theatrical version still contains a moment where the deputies discuss a body that's been found in the basement, but there are no further details provided. These missing scenes actually provide a context for who that body is, even if it doesn't happen to be an important character. If nothing else, the inclusion of these scenes at least speaks to Roth’s ability as a filmmaker—they’re not just sloppy mistakes on his part.
The unrated version also features an altered ending that’s much grander in scope. It’s not just the police that enjoy some of the tainted lemonade, but instead it’s the entire town. It makes the same point, but in a much bleaker way and on a very sped-up timeline. There may only be a few alterations, but altogether they work to create a much more nihilistic movie. The extended version with these additional scenes is actually Eli Roth's original cut of the movie that he took to film festivals before it was acquired by Lionsgate and edits were made. Roth's vision was restored via the film's Blu-Ray release, but he didn't cut together a new version of the movie for the home video market—it already existed. Eli Roth is a director who truly pushes the limits of an R-rating, and this was just a good opportunity for a director who has dealt with his share of censorship to get back some glory on Cabin Fever.
