HORROR'S HAD A good go of it lately: recent releases Freddy vs. Jason and Jeepers Creepers 2 both opened atop the box-office charts, and U.K. import 28 Days Later was one of summer's biggest sleeper hits. The time is ripe, then, for Cabin Fever, an indie flick that screened at this year's San Francisco International Film Festival and is being heavily promoted on billboards all over town ("Cabin Fever ... catch it!").

It's not hard to guess which DVDs Cabin Fever director and cowriter Eli Roth keeps on heavy rotation: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, the Evil Dead films, Night of the Living Dead, Last House on the Left, any number of hillbilly-exploitation midnight classics, etc. The film pays homage with plot (a group of city kids are terrorized deep in the woods) and tone (slowly escalating tension punctuated by the occasional bizarre interlude). Roth also happens to be a David Lynch protégé, and Lynch's influence is felt in some of the stranger characters (the young son of the local-yokel general store owner who breaks into a karate routine before clamping his teeth on the nearest warm body). Longtime Lynch collaborator Angelo Bandalamenti also contributes portions of the score – though the most obvious musical motifs are the creepy folk songs borrowed from Last House on the Left ("and the rooooaaad leads to nowhere ...").

Indeed, Cabin Fever – though admirably filmed in wide-screen and with C.G.-free, old-school special effects – at times feels like little more than a collage of Roth's favorite horror flicks. The ending (which I won't give away here, obviously) is a particularly eye-rolling rip-off of one of the films cited above. But one thing's for certain: as the movie progresses, it becomes increasingly clear that the aftershocks of Scream have all but completely subsided. Cabin Fever may be directly patterned on horror fare that came before (like, a generation before), but its dialogue is devoid of self-reflexive irony and snickering pop-culture references (not even to Deliverance, mentioned in this summer's far stinkier but vaguely similar Wrong Turn). And that, at least, is refreshing.

Appropriately enough for our SARS-, anthrax-, and West Nile-fearing times, Cabin Fever's monster of choice is a mysterious flesh-eating disease. The affliction shares some symptoms with 28 Days Later's "rage" (such as projectile blood vomiting) but also differs significantly: its victims don't turn into violent zombies – they just rot, fester, and pass it on. An outbreak of deadly illness is plenty chilling, but Cabin Fever ups the ante by introducing further conflict both external (a wrecked truck, a hostile dog, unhelpful neighbors, a wilderness so isolated cell phones are useless) and internal, as each camper grapples with the tension in increasingly hysterical ways. In the end, Cabin Fever emerges far gorier than it is scary; you'll be hiding your eyes not in fright but because what's on-screen tends toward the gleefully disgusting.